After 200 pages of walls of text with no paragraph breaks in the last book I read, the format of this book was a blessed relief.
This is written as snipets from interviews pieced together into a coherent story about the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac style rock band in the 60s and 70s.
Like a talking heads style documentary, the character name would be followed by mostly single paragraphs talking about the events under discussion at the time. Occasionally, someone would have a whole page talking about how they felt or why they did something, but it was rare. There were frequent interjections of single short sentences.
The plot is slim. It's a rock and roll memoir from the POV of all the band members, management and their significant others. We know from the start that this is going to be a rise and fall story and the reasons for the fall are all too visible in the rise.
I thought this was a real page turner. I read the whole thing in a matter of three days or so. It's fast paced, brilliantly evocative of the era and totally convincing.
The contradictory voices are a great way of suggesting deeper stories hidden below the surface and the character's truths hidden somewhere between what they actually say.
Daisy and Billy are a great pair of central characters and, as much as I hate will-they-won't-they narratives normally, I was invested in this one.
This is also the first time I've been able to listen to the soundtrack of a book as i read it. The music from the TV series was released as the Aurora album that we read about. It's noticeable that the lyrics are quite different in the actual songs but I really quite enjoyed it. I normally like heavier fare, but this was a genuinely good album. I probably need to watch the tv show now to see if the changes for tv explain the different emphasis in the lyrics.
Highly recommended.