This reminded me of Daisy Jones and The Six because of the style but it is very different. I had a hard time putting this down. It was entertaining and so good. I loved the characters and could relate to them in their own way. Highly recommend this story.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dawnie Walton for a free ebook copy to read and provide honest feedback.

Let's start with the elephant in the room. This has similarities to Daisy Jones & The Six due to the fact that it is a rock and roll tell-all, interview format. That's it! While the format and storytelling are similar they are completely different narratives and tell completely different tales.

First off, Daisy Jones reads as a Fleetwood Mac fanfic, while Opal is revolutionary and 100% original in its conceptualization. Daisy Jones tells the POV of the band members, where as Opal gives us a 360 view into the everyday lives of recording legends and what it was like to be an artist in the 1960s/1970s.

I won't lie, in the beginning, I did get a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of characters and I felt the coming together of Opal and Nev wasn't nuanced enough, it just sort of...happens because he walked into a club on the right night. But that's where it all ends and the magic of the novel begins.

I mean, this is a feminist piece that we have been waiting for. Opal is extremely out spoken, unguarded, and opinionated and look how she is both reviled and treated throughout the whole novel. It is an entire mood to wipe your a** with a confederate flag, tear it to shreds, and maybe light it on fire. SHE is the star and SHE is a force to be reckoned with.

Overall, this was a great piece that examines femininity, racial tensions, and stereotypical roles in society. It conquers the genre that Daisy Jones' tried to claim.

P.S I did buy the audible book so I could listen to the full cast read the book!

This novel was both entertaining and extremely relevant, which is brought home by the author as the storyline comes into the present for the reunion show. I love the oral history format and enjoyed the different viewpoints throughout the novel – particularly Virgil and Opal! My only minor complaint was that it dragged a little in the middle for me, but otherwise I loved this book and would highly recommend it. Thanks to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an advance copy!

A miraculous debut novel reminiscent of “Daisy Jones and The Six” as told in an oral history format. In 2016 music journalist S. Sunny Shelton is interviewing and creating a book about her idols, Opal Jewel and British singer/songwriter Neville Charles among the reunion tour they are planning. Sunny is the daughter of their drummer who was killed in an uprising at their concert in the 70s. This highly atmospheric story encompasses real events to add to the history and authenticity. It is very character driven and I grew to feel as if I actually knew them. This book tackles racism and topics that are tragically relevant still today. This was a fascinating and compelling read. Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Believe the hype because this story is absolutely worth it. Learn the history of Opal and Nev’s music career and so much more in Dawnie Walton’s brilliant debut. A hybrid novel of journalism/oral history and storytelling, this book is a love letter to the struggling artist, the old school NY music scene, the indelible history of Black America, and the legacy of Afro Punk. Powerfully edited and full of insightful writing, there is a character for every reader to connect with.

I had seen some comparisons between this book and Daisy Jones and the Six, but aside from the oral format and rock & roll subject matter, these books varied greatly. This was a welcome surprise for me, because I wasn’t a huge fan of Daisy Jones. Where DJ lacked, this book delivered! The authenticity of the characters really resonated with me, and the subject matter rang true and relevant to what is happening in our society today. I really enjoyed this book, and highly recommend - what a great debut novel!

Thank you to NetGalley, Simon & Schuster/37 Ink, and Dawnie Walton for an ARC of this book! Now available!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free book.
I actually ended up purchasing the audiobook and listening to this book. Highly recommend this format because it is a full cast. This book is set up as an oral history of Opal and Nev trying to become something in the 1970s music scene. There are so many layers to this story. Racial tensions, racism, affairs, insider looks at the music industry. The cast of characters were unique and interesting. I cringed at some and loved others. I just wish the story had a bit more momentum. I loved the beginning and end but felt things dragged a bit in the middle of the first two parts. However, it was still an amazing debut, and music lovers will love this one.

I know lots of people like this. I imagine it could be good, but this is the second book I’ve read that’s in an interview format with musicians, and I didn’t really care for the other one either. I guess this isn’t a writing style I like, and I won’t read anymore.

I made it to chapter 11, and I’ve been torturing myself, so I decided I can’t do it anymore. There’s still so much of the book left and I’d rather spend that time reading a book I enjoy. It really hurts my heart to dnf a book, because I don’t think it has anything to do with the author, but rather just my own personal tastes. Apparently I just don’t like these types of books, I find them pointless and boring, and that’s not the authors fault. So I don’t want to give this a bad rating because I can’t judge the whole book, but I have to rate it based off the fact that I had to dnf it.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Storygraph!

Reading 2021
Book 33: The Final Revival of Opal and Nev

Received a copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for my review. Also dedicating this review to my longtime friend Scott Blackman, he really enjoys music and thought he would love this book. 😎

Okay so lots of hype out there for this book, and deservedly so. This book is being compared to Daisy Jones and the Six. Other than the format is an interview style oral history and it is about music, that is where the comparisons should end. Yes, Opal and Nev contains sex, drugs, and rock n roll, but there is so much more. It is about the race, politics, and music in 1970s NYC. There are so many topics discussed by all the major players in the story as Sunny does interviews for what will become the book we read. Relationships, adultery, fashion, AIDS, addiction, NYC, family bonds, religion, punk rock are a few more of the topics explored in this book. Opal (a black woman from Detroit with a killer voice and hot fashion style to match) and Nev ( a white male singer/songwriter from England) are so much more than the music, and the book explores all aspects of their relationship past and present.

This book was a wild ride and I enjoyed every word. Downloaded the audiobook as well. Want to hear the voices with a full cast, now that I have read the book. It would have been awesome for there to have been some pictures of all the outfits Opal wore in the book as well. Going to be tuning in to my SiriusXM 70s channel in my car for a while to listen to all the sounds of the decade (my favorite decade of music). I had to Google a couple of times while reading to see if the book was memoir or a real account. You will see what I mean when you read it for yourself. Recommending this book highly, my rating 4.5 ⭐ .

DNF’d at 50%

Honestly, I thought about putting this one down earlier but I wanted to give it a bit more of a chance. I think this is a case of a book just not being for me.

At the beginning of the book, I was struck by how similar the format is to Daisy Jones and the Six, and how similar the premise is to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I was really hoping for a unique story from there. However, I never felt like I connected with any of the characters, which was disappointing. I think this is all due to the format, which gives you very little insight into the characters besides what they say. To do this format well, your dialogue needs to be excellent. But there was not enough to distinguish between all the characters. The format also made it hard to keep track of the secondary characters. Many of these secondary characters felt like caricatures rather than real people.

I appreciate what the author was trying to do here, but once I got to the “main event” that everyone was leading up to for the first half of the book, I honestly wasn’t invested and did not care what was going to happen in the second half.

Reminiscent of Daisy Jones but its own animal for sure. Opal is an amazing character. Some of the Nev bits annoyed me, but they were worth it for all the Opalness. This felt very real from the start, like was I reading nonfiction? This was super tight for a debut novel. Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

*4.5 stars

I was sold the moment I went through the blurb – if there was one thing I knew, it was that I wanted to read this book. Clearly I didn't read it well enough, because it led to a mildly embarrassing moment for me when I dove into the first chapter.

This first chapter happened to be one of several editor's notes distributed across the novel. In it, the narrator explained her own personal, complicated relationship with Opal Jewel, as both an idol and her father's mistress; the reason behind why she had never told anyone of this relationship; and how she came to find herself writing this book. I was halfway through learning all of this history when I figured "hey, maybe I should Google Opal Jewel and Neville Charles, find out what they look like, so that I can have an image of them in my mind as I read on". Naturally, I found nothing. "Opal Jewel", "Opal and Nev Charles rock 'n' roll", even "Marion Jacobie photographer of Opal and Nev famous picture" – none of it got me anywhere. That was when I finally had the bright idea to go reread that blurb on Goodreads, and lo and behold: the third word there was 'fictional'.

The reason why I mention this at all is to reinforce what I'm about to say next, which is that 'The Final Revival of Opal & Nev' was written very, very realistically. Every fact S. Sunny Curtis (our narrator) presented, every quote, every point of view – all of it was meticulously put together, with added information given in the form of footnotes to make the reader truly immerse themselves in this world where Sunny wanted to tell society the truth about Opal and Nev's careers.

Dawnie Walton's characters all had very clear-cut, unique personalities, each and every single one of them intriguing in their own ways. The writing was outstanding, the plot as relevant today as it was in the 1970s, where Opal & Nev began their journey together. However, there was one small issue I had which led me to drop my rating half a star, and that was with the editor's notes themselves. There was nothing explicitly wrong with them: Sunny explained her story well, filling in the blanks for those fictional readers of her book who weren't aware of all of the facts; I liked Sunny, too, her direct personality leading her forward. It was specifically the absence of formality which was sometimes awkward. After all, she was hired by Opal to write this book, wasn't she? Should her own interjections not have been a little more professional, considering this was supposed to be a book about Opal, not herself?

The explanation for this, of course, came later, just as Sunny had hinted at in her initial editor's note. It was a very reasonable explanation, too; it simply did not take away from the fact that I had spent a portion of my reading thinking otherwise, being unable to fully enjoy those certain scenes due to the tone they had been written in. Even so, this was only a small aspect in the grand scheme of things: I really very much did love reading this book.

I saw a lot of comparisons of this book to Daisy Jones, and while they are both written as oral histories of fictional musicians, I would say they are very different types of books. The oral history format is definitely something that intrigued me originally because I enjoyed it so much in Daisy Jones, but the execution in Opal & Nev didn’t work quite as well for me.

I did really enjoy the general concept of the book being written from the perspective of Jimmy’s daughter and exploring her varied and complicated feelings about Opal. I also really loved Opal and Virgil as characters and the dynamics of their friendship over the years.

I came for the music and stayed for Opal. This book was so much more than just the music and the beginnings and ends of Opal and Nev. It was History in a way that we haven’t seen, it was social justice issues and family and everything. This book had me crying because my heart hurt for all the injustice in the world. This book is a must-read.

The writing was incredible, the storytelling was incredible, the characters were brilliant, you could really feel what they were trying to get you to feel. This was definitely one of my favorite books of the year. I don’t really know how else to describe how incredible this book was, I was deeply moved and I think this story will make a great impact on everyone who reads it. It’s a must-read.

This felt a totally refreshing story-line and will leave a sure impact due to it being so unforgettable. Having very limited exposure to iconic 70s rock music, this opened up a new world that kept me engaged. The life of rock-stars has always been complicated and filled with drama, with added racism angle discussed it felt very relevant. Behind the glamour of the rockstar world, there is so much so much sexism and racism in the 70s and hope it is better now or getting there.

This is the Debut you need to make sure you read this year!

Walton has written an incredible story that will make you wonder if what you are reading is really historical fiction. This novel is written in an interview/editorial style and I believe would make an excellent audio book.

We are reading from Sunny's point of view mostly as she is the Editor and is putting together/writing this book about the rise and fall of punk duo Opal and Nev. As the book goes along Sunny dives into a more personal matter when she gets to the heart of the fact that her Dad, the Drummer for Opal and Nev, was Opal's lover and was also died suddenly in a mysterious chaotic event.

I highly recommend this book to all readers.

This novel felt fresh, original . I kept wanting to look up information about Opal and Nev, as though they were real people. I enjoyed the mystery and documentary elements the writer employed, which contributed to a wholly engaging narrative. It's a genre bending book, that actually could be shelved in many categories. Most of all, it was fun to read that kept me interested and rooting for Opal the entire time.

„An electrifying novel about the meteoric rise of an iconic 1970s rock duo, their sensational breakup, and the dark secrets unearthed when they try to reunite for one last tour.

Provocative and chilling, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev features a backup chorus of unforgettable voices, a heroine the likes of which we’ve not seen in storytelling, and a daring structure, and introduces a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.“

The novel is written as an oral history piece compiled of many many “fictional” (easy to forget, it all seems so very real) interviews that the journalist gathers to put together a book but we get as readers get the raw material and it is brilliant. One of the novel's many pleasures is eavesdropping on these many voices compiled - such a cast of colorful characters !
Race and what it means out in the world and specifically in the music business in the 70s and today (or at least 2016) is the big all-encompassing topic but the author handles it gloriously light and the novel will enthrall anyone.

I don’t even know where to begin. This book is electric. This book is timeless. This book is feel-it-deep-in-your bones good. This is my first fictional oral history (is this a genre?? Where can I find more?) and it’s such a powerful way to tell a story. Walton has crafted vivid characters with singular voices to piece together a narrative of the rise and fall of an Afro-pink interracial duo in the 1970s. That narrative is patchy and biased and unfinished just as with any real oral history. And also just like any real history, we see Opal and Nev’s careers and lives inextricably intertwined and influence by the racism, sexism, and really capitalism that surrounds them. Reading this coming from Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her was so important. The juxtaposition between Opal and Nev and the consequences Opal faces for her rage and the response of the people and society around her to that rage is so stark it’s jarring. I didn’t devour this book. In fact, after a culminating moment in the middle, I set it down for a while. I can’t quite decide if there was a lull or if it was just too much and I needed to step away. But if you get that same feeling, push through because it’s worth it. I would not be shocked if this became my favorite book of 2021. This is a must read!