Hi friends! It’s been a little while since my last Annotate with Me post, and I’m really excited about this one because today we’ll be talking about Daisy Jones and the Six!
I absolutely love this book —- it’s my favorite Taylor Jenkins Reid book. I did a reread at the end of last year and realized that I absolutely had to annotate it! With the Amazon series premiering TOMORROW (!!!) this seems like the perfect time to share my annotations with you all.
As I’m sure you all know, I am a huge music fan, and one of my favorite bands of all time is Fleetwood Mac, so obviously, this book really speaks to me. What I love most about it is that no matter how many times I have read it, I am fully captivated by this story and these characters. Each time I lose myself in the story, I’ll feel like I just started reading and then look at the clock and realize hours have passed.
This was truly such a fun annotation process for me —- so many moments and lines stuck out to me. Honestly, many of my pages look like this
which is when you can tell that I’m having the most fun annotating. That being said, it’s time to get cozy, grab a cup of tea, maybe turn on Aurora and let’s get started!
As always with Annotate with Me posts, there are spoilers so, if you haven’t read Daisy Jones and the Six, proceed with caution!
Taylor Jenkins Reid truly does not play around in the book, and you see that right from the start with our introduction to Daisy Jones. In general, everything about this reread really hit for me (probably because I was annotating and thinking/looking deeper) but oh boy, oh boy did our introduction to Daisy make me sad.
This really sets up an overall character arc for Daisy, and lets us know that longing, sadness, and loneliness are a huge part of Daisy and her story. We hear that Daisy is captivating, even from a young age, and then we’re told that the thing that makes her captivating, is the fact that she is desperate for connection.
How heartbreaking is that? We live in a world where as a society, we love to see people at their weakest. It’s viewed as something that is almost beautiful. It’s entertainment to see a beautiful young woman broken and lonely because she’s been neglected. That’s how Daisy’s story is set up — all she ever wanted was to be seen and loved by someone because she was never shown that from her parents, the people who are supposed to love her most. That desperation for love causes her to chase self-destructive behavior just to make her feel something, or to make someone notice her.
I love Daisy’s complexity and throughout so much of the book I just want to give her a hug and tell her that everything will be okay. What I especially love about the interview format is that we read about all of the struggles that Daisy went through, but because we’re hearing about this after the fact, we know that Daisy ends up living a much healthier life after the band, which really warms my heart.
Part of why I think this story is so successful is the format that it’s told in. Truthfully, I don’t know if this book would have the same impact if it was told in the present tense. This format allows us to easily jump from one character to another without it feeling choppy or disjointed. I also think that this format really lends itself to the tension and drama as we get different versions of the same story right after the other.
What I really love about this format is that so many of the characters have such clarity on how they were feeling at the time and how their emotions influenced their actions. I think that Daisy has this really beautiful honesty about why she made the choices she did. She gets brutally honest, even when it paints her in a bad light, but I feel like there are times where Billy is really holding back, especially when it comes to how he felt (or feels…) about Daisy, which does make sense since the person he’s recounting all of this to is his and Camila’s daughter.
One of my favorite parts of the entire book is the recording of Impossible Woman —- a song that Billy wrote after seeing Daisy parting at her hotel. With lines like “Dancing barefoot in the snow/cold can’t touch her, high or low”, “She’ll have you running/in the wrong direction/have you coming/for the wrong obsessions/oh, she’s gunning/for your redemption/have you headed/back to confession”, and “Walk away from the impossible/you’ll never touch her/never ease your soul” it’s obvious to everyone that the song is about Daisy — it’s even clear to Daisy herself. But, Billy continually insists that it’s not about Daisy but about wanting something you can’t have, which in this case is the exact same thing.
There are lots of instances where it’s not totally clear which person’s account of a situation actually reflects the truth, but this is one of the situations where I think that what Daisy says is the more truthful version of what happened. She says that Billy told her the song was about her, and Billy says that he “absolutely never told Daisy the song was about her.” But, just the page before, Billy says “I wrote the song for her. I mean I wrote it for her to sing.” That’s such a quick slip, and he tries to backtrack it by saying he wrote it for her in the sense that it was for her to sing, but that little slip just solidifies for me that even Billy never explicitly said the words, he in his own way, told Daisy that the song was about her. The two of them also understand each other in a way that others don’t, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he had alluded to it and Daisy just understood.
I really do think that the way Billy talks about Daisy is so fascinating. Firstly, there are times when he speaks about her in the present tense, such as on page 210 where he says, “It… it feels good to make Daisy smile. It’s… [pauses] I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying” I do think that it’s entirely possible that when you’re really immersing yourself in the past and telling a story like this to get lost in it and speak like it’s really happening, however, Billy is very good about speaking in the past tense, but sometimes he slips up when talking about Daisy and it kind of makes me want to eat drywall.
Billy also uses a lot of possessive language when it comes to Daisy. I’m not saying that he thinks he “owned” or “possessed” her in any way, but the language that he uses speaks to their connection being much deeper than he likes to admit. He does this on page 247, when he’s talking about her marriage to Niccolo (and his jealousy over it), he says that he was “sick and tired of being treated like I was her problem. She was my problem”. He very easily could’ve just said something like “I was tired of being treated like the problem when she was the problem”, but instead he uses possessive language, therefore making it personal.
This use of language is also interesting to me because Daisy doesn’t speak with that same sort of possessiveness over Billy — which I think makes sense because she knows that she never had him (Camila/Billy/Daisy are cardigan/betty/august, so you’re welcome for that), but there was a part of Daisy that Billy had. I find it kind of heartbreaking,
Reid is really able to play with perception vs. reality through this storytelling format. There are always two sides to a story, there’s what happened and someone’s perception of the situation, and because people are biased by nature, there’s really no way of knowing if what they’re saying is the truth or what they’ve convinced themselves is the truth, which I find so interesting!
There is a lot of this in Daisy Jones and the Six, and it is one of my favorite things about the book. I love reading all the different ways that these characters interpret certain situations, and being able to see the difference in perspective, even all these years later. I mean, they couldn’t even agree on how the band name was chosen; that’s how you know there’s going to be drama and I love it.
One of the instances where we see a lot of this is when discussing how choices were made for the band. Billy has a very headstrong personality — he knows what he wants and usually gets his way, however, he likes to think that he was much more of a team player than he actually was.
All these different accounts and relationship dynamics are so interesting to me, and I really can’t wait to see how this plays out on screen in the series.
Something that I really noticed this time around (but was always aware of) were the similarities between Daisy and Camila. Both are strong and independent women who aren’t afraid to speak their minds.
Karen describes Camila as “a force to be reckoned with. She got what she wanted. Almost all the time. She was persuasive and kind of pushy — although, you never really realized you were being pushed. But she was opinionated and knew how to get her way.” and really, if you didn’t know that Karen was talking about Camila, she could be talking about Daisy. Both women had this incredible and powerful energy that made people notice them.
There’s so much more to both Daisy and Camila than just Billy, they’re their own people, but I think you kind of do have to talk about Billy if you’re going to talk about their similarities.
I remember reading what Billy said about Camila for the first time and feeling so emotional. I just think it’s beautiful. Camila really brought out the best in Billy —- she showed him the kind of man he wanted to be, and the kind of man that he could be.
Billy put Camila on a pedestal (I don’t blame him, Camila is a queen) and he never really felt good enough for her. Pair that with his fear of becoming like his father and his addiction, it’s not necessarily surprising that he ended up cheating on Camila almost immediately after they got married.
I loved that Camila was never in denial of Billy’s struggles. She knew his demons and knew that they wouldn’t have an easy life, but she loved him and she knew what he was capable of and she never gave up on him, which I think is amazing. Just like Karen said, she knew how to get her way, and Camila wanted Billy — and she never gave up on him. I love what she says on page 76,
“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?”
I just think that line says everything you need to know about Camila. She saw the best in people, and she would do anything and everything she could to get them there. I think that having faith in people even when they haven’t earned it yet takes so much strength, and I think Camila had the strongest will out of all of them.
Now, in my mind, there was never any doubt that Billy loved Camila. I don’t think that he could’ve said the things he said or written the songs he wrote about her if he was not completely in love with her. However, I do think that it’s possible to be in love with multiple people, and it’s clear that Billy was also in love with Daisy.
Throughout the book we hear so much about how beautiful Daisy was; how men couldn’t take their eyes off of her, and yes, Billy does mention that Daisy was beautiful, but what I really appreciate is that when he talks about how he was mesmerized by her, how he fell in love with her, he doesn’t talk about her looks. He talks about her as a person — which I think is part of what drew Daisy to him; he saw her on a human level and not just her looks . He says that they were two halves and that they were the same, and they were. Daisy and Billy understood each other in a way that no one — not even Camila — understood them. They loved the same things and had the same struggles, they just fit. In my opinion, Daisy and Billy are truly the definition of right person, wrong time.
Billy says that Camila maybe wasn’t the person he was most in love with, but she was the person he loved the most and she was the one that he chose. That doesn’t negate his feelings for Daisy, just as his love for Camila didn’t negate his feelings for Daisy. I think that there is a lot of complexity to their entire situation, and because Billy and Camila’s daughter is the one that they’re telling this story to (and I think Billy is still a bit in denial of what happened with him and Daisy), we’ll never really know the truth of what went down between them.
Personally, I love the dynamic between Camila and Daisy, even though we don’t see much of it. I love the little recount of the first time Daisy and Camila met during the Numbers Tour. I think that Daisy probably wanted to make a good impression on Camila — I think she was probably a little intimidated by her, especially after hearing all of these songs that Billy wrote about Camila. I really love that Camila says that just because Billy didn’t like Daisy, didn’t mean that Camila couldn’t have her own opinion of Daisy. While it’s not explicitly stated, I think that Camila could see that Daisy was lost and that she needed some kindness from someone who didn’t need anything from her. I also really love the little moments between Daisy and Julia; I think it was clear that Daisy really liked Julia, and we know Julia idolized Daisy. Having those background moments described and then having it revealed that Julia was the one interviewing them was mind blowing to me the first time I read it, I just loved that.
My absolute favorite part of the entire book is the recount of the concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12th, 1979 — it really is the culmination of the entire story being told, but most importantly, it’s Daisy telling Julia about what happened with her and Camila that night.
I think that it would’ve been SO easy (and really understandable) to make Camila and Daisy rivals who hate each other and harbor so much ill will toward one another, but TJR decided not to do that, and I’m honestly so glad that she didn’t. In my opinion, that is what makes this moment so beautiful. Camila sits down with this woman that she knows loves her husband, that she knows her husband loves, and doesn’t get angry, doesn’t yell or scream or fight, and instead talks to her. Camila could see how broken Daisy felt, and I think part of her kindness comes from knowing how it feels to have your heart broken by Billy.
I don’t think that anyone would’ve blamed Camila if she hated Daisy. Her husband was in love with Daisy — she 100% had a reason to be angry at her, but she wasn’t. She genuinely liked Daisy and wanted the best for her, which I think takes much more strength than people think. Camila could see that this was killing Daisy the way it was killing Billy, the way that it was probably killing her as well, and instead of saying rude things or calling her names, she tells her that she wants good things for her. That she’s rooting for her, and I just think that’s so beautiful.
This moment is a case where even though we’re only hearing it from Daisy’s point of view, I believe that this is exactly what happened because it is so clear that Daisy felt so grateful for Camila and what she did for her that night. I don’t think she would’ve embellished this. I think that she wanted Julia to know just how important Camila was to her.
Oftentimes when you’re on a destructive path, all you need is one person to sit with you, really see you, and tell you that they know you can turn things around. Camila did it for Billy, and she did it for Daisy. I truly think that Camila was really the only person who could get through to Daisy. Many people tried, but I think that this coming from a woman who could so easily hate her made it mean that much more. By this point Daisy was so hopeless and thought that she would never be able to move past what it was that she was feeling, and then Camila comes in and tells her that she has so much more in her than she thinks she does, and it completely changes her life.
I remember reading “I left the band because Camila Dunne asked me to. And it was the very best thing I’ve ever done. It is how I saved myself. Because your mother saved me from myself.
I may not have known your mother very well.
But I promise you, I loved her very much.” for the first time and it hit me like a punch to the gut. I just thought that it was so beautiful and so moving, in fact, it’s making me cry right now because I love it so much. This story may be about Daisy Jones and the Six, but at the heart of this story is Camila.
I think that so much of this book is about how the choices that we make do not always reflect the people that we truly are, but the people we are at the time, and how one choice can change the course of our entire lives. Sometimes, all you need is one person to see you for who you could be, who you want to be, and the faith that another person can have in you is what can save you. This moment between Camila and Daisy is a reflection of that, and I think that it truly is the most beautiful part of the book.
In another universe I think that Camila and Daisy would’ve been great friends and it breaks my heart that we don’t get to experience it.
Oof! This was a long one my friends, I know, and really, I could’ve written more. I just love this book. I am so excited to watch the show tomorrow night and I can’t wait to see what stays the same, what’s changed, and truthfully, I’m just really excited to see this story that I love actualized.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on anything I talked about here, or just Daisy Jones and the Six in general. Until next time!
