Opal Robinson isn't the best singer in the world but she has that presence, the X-factor, she's electric on stage and that's why Nev Charles picks her to join him in a musical venture. And so Opal & Nev is formed. Opal reinvents herself in 1970s New York, becoming Opal Jewel, fierce, talented and a force to be reckoned with. Together, Opal and Nev are rising stars at their label, Rivington Records, until violence erupts at a show they are putting on with their label mates and things will never be the same again.

First things first, nearly every review for this is going to mention Daisy Jones and the Six. Both books are set in 1970s and follow a rock band's rise to fame. Both are told in the format of a fictional oral history. But honestly, they aren't really that similar and so comparisons pretty much end there.

There's some great characters in this book, particularly Opal and Virgil. I think this method of story telling is good, it certainly suits stories set in this type of world but I do feel it creates something of a distance between the reader and the characters at times. Additionally, Nev in particular didn't feel fully fleshed out to me, not quite a real person which was disappointing.

I did find it a bit of a slog I have to admit. It didn't grip me particularly and I didn't find myself reaching for it until quite near the end. I was rooting for both Opal and Sunny but I didn't feel like the book really paid off and so I was left feeling a little unsatisfied. Some of the action I was waiting for was relegated to footnotes that acted as a bit of an epilogue but I wanted to see some of this played out.

I thought that this was impressive to say that it was a debut novel but it didn't quite work for me.

This fictional oral history tells the story of Opal Jewel, a young black woman from Detroit with a big voice, and Nev Charles, a British wanna-be rockstar, who team up as a duet in the ‘70s. The story weaves together their upbringings, how they came together, one disastrous show and everything that followed. It was very intriguing and a must-read for anyone who liked Daisy Jones & The Six or who is a big rock & roll fan!

I loved the interview style of the book and I thought the writing was amazing. I did think the ending was abrupt, but I know I will think about this book for a long time to come!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for my digital ARC!

A friend said this felt a lot like Daisy Jones and the Six with racism added. And true, in incredibly simplistic terms it is very similar. Musicians, a retrospective, a variety of points of view in an interview format. But the characters are very, very different and the experiences in the book are very, very different. Opal grows up in full knowledge of the racism around her. Sometimes she capitulates and sometimes she fights back. That is the backbone of this book. (Please note: Nev is not a main character. This book is all Opal.) Opal and her need to stand up for herself and Black Americans fuels what I thought should have been the climax of the book and colors the relationships throughout. Yes, I did feel like the book should have ended earlier. I think everything that happened afterwards could have been included but the concert should have been the last part of the book. But, that doesn't detract from the incredible characters created and the powerful story told.

I love oral histories. When I read the summary of this book I couldn’t resist. This book did not disappoint! I loved knowing who the editor was from the beginning. I wanted to compare this to Daisy Jones and the Six, but really found this one more compelling. Now that the audio book is out I plan to listen to it next.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy.

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev is told through an "interview" format. I read that it is similar to Daisy Jones and the Six. Though it was through interview format I found it hard to follow along with the characters. I felt there was way too many in each chapter. But overall, the book was good.

There’s a bit of a slew of books coming out recently that claim to be similar to Daisy Jones & the Six; this is one you’ll want to read. Opal & Nev focuses mostly on a pretty singular character- Opal Jewel, the unapologetic, bold, fierce, free-spirited Black singer in this photo-punk rock duo that has broken up a long time ago- but might be raring for a comeback. The book is told through an oral history format, & through editor’s notes from the “author” (the daughter of the band’s drummers, & Opal’s lover). There’s a real urgency to the book because of this perspective. You can feel the pain & grief that S. Sunny has had to live with, the balance she had to strike between keeping her professional distance & her curiosity to know about her father & his relationship with Opal. But as the story unfolds, you & Sunny both get pulled into Opal’s story, her orbit.

This oral history format worked well here, especially at the beginning where there was a bit more back & forth between perspectives. But the driving strength of this book is Opal- what decisions she made, the opportunities she took to advance her voice, & her astute, wry observations about being a Black female singer in the 1970’s.

The author anchored this fictional band/record company in a totally recognizable world, & gave us references that help to contextualize Opal & Nev, which I thought was so smart.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is such a strong debut novel, & I can’t wait to read what Dawnie Walton does next.

I was interested in this book because of the time period but there is just too many characters that are too hard to keep track of and I don't understand where the story is going.

I really enjoyed this book! I've seen a lot of people promoting this book for fans of Daisy Jones and the Six, and while I see the similarities (fictional oral history of a musical group), I'm think that comparison does a disservice to The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. This storyline had so much depth and the characters were diverse (not just in terms of Black vs white) and well-developed. It was also so compelling and readable! I could barely put it down, but at times I forced myself to take a break to reflect. This book features a lot of political/racial themes that are sadly so relevant today. One that I really thought a lot about was enjoying someone's art or talent but devaluing them as a person, essentially only appreciating them for their entertainment value. This is a story that will stay with me and one that I look forward to adding to my shelf. Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for making a digital ARC available in exchange for an honest review.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is the debut novel of Dawnie Walton. It is an oral history of Afro-punk singers Opal & Nev. This book reminded me of a Behind the Music episode. Told by multiple viewpoints, Opal and Nev seemed so real, I kept trying to look their albums up before I reminded myself this was fiction! I can’t wait to see what this author writes next. Awesome fictional debut. Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

What a book! The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is an amazing oral history format story of Opal, a black woman from Detroit pairing up with Nev, an earnest English musician who needs a partner to bring his music to the next level.

There is a love affair, racism, charged atmospheres filled with violence and a moment that changes the duo's life forever. ` I found this book to be a really fascinating read. It looked at music and social issues with an interesting lens. It gave us fully realized characters who were interesting and thought provoking. The going back and forth in time to hear the accounts of all parties involved made for some poignant commentary on today's issues and what things were like back in the 70s.

Highly recommend this book! Thank you NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the ACR.

I am a huge Daisy Jones & the Six fan and I've noticed many comparisons between it and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. There are definitely similarities. Both books utilize an interview style in the story-telling and the setting is the 1970's. In addition, both books are about people trying to make a go in the music industry...but it's also so much more. There is a lot of insight into the treatment of people of color - - especially women. The book is set in 2016 with interviews that take the reader back to the 1970's and the events that lead up to one tragic night that has deadly repercussions.

The storyline takes many issues head on. For one, it shows that sitting on the sidelines and not actively speaking out can sometimes be just as damaging as being on the opposing side of the message. It's eye-opening and heartbreaking all at the same time. It was fascinating to see how Ms. Walton wove this story into actual events from the past. At times, I felt like Opal and Nev must be real people. It just felt so much like a part of history. This storyline is blunt, honest and raw. It isn't an easy read, but is most definitely a timely one as it addresses, with heartbreaking clarity, the racial unrest in our country.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a well-written novel with a graceful flow between the present and past events. I did feel like the storyline moved slower in some areas. However, overall I found this to be a solid read with a clear message.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

This book right here is excellent!  I loved the way the story was structured and how bold and strong the storytelling was.  I felt like I was in an episode of Unsung with all the stories of the interviewees.  I was eating up the descriptions of Opal and her climb to be somebody.  This is a completely fictional book but it reads like non-fiction - which is a credit to the author’s writing for sure.

Told in the style of an oral history of the formation and dissolution of a fictional proto-punk band breaking ground in New York City in the early 1970s, “The Final Revival of Opal & Nev” deploys exquisite detail and a menagerie of narrational voices to relate a story that feels topical, timely, vivid, and almost too believable.

Opal & Nev are formed by impressionable white British transplant Neville Charles and electric, exciting, opinionated, iconic African-American Opal Jewel, a unexpected pairing whose brash new music caught fire in a cultural moment drawn taut with racial tension. Their rise to fame is chronicled in their own voices as well as the words of their colleagues and friends, strung together through the editorial voice and choices of S. Sunny Curtis, a music magazine editor with a personal connection to their tale.

The structure of the book is tight and well laid out, with momentum building in the past as revelations unfold in the present. The energy of the New York music scene and the alchemy of Opal & Nev’s partnership feels visceral and exciting, your heart pounding along with theirs as the music finds its wings and takes flight in the studio. The baggage of tangled personal relationships gains weight in the intervening 40 years, spilling open in the story’s present.

Walton sure-handedly focuses the narrative on the characters with the most to say: Opal, a force of nature who pulls focus with her presentation and uses the attention to fiercely tell her truth; and Sunny, the emotional ground and the cultural observer with the most perspective. Walton has an equal gift for spectacle (huge concert setpieces) and for small, observed details that situate the narrative in our hearts and eyes (“that time of the afternoon when the sun is strong coming in through the curtains – a million specks of dust exposed and floating in the light, telling stories on you”).

Past history and present drama ramp up in tandem, leading to a climax that brings the stories together with a sharp clap. As Opal says, “That’s just time working like the thing on your phone. What’s that you called it? …A GIF, yeah. Looping around and around…” “The Final Revival of Opal & Nev” is an immersive and necessary debut that offers as much to think about as there is to enjoy. As much as we’ll wish to hear Opal Jewel’s next album, we will eagerly await what Dawnie Walton has to say next.

Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the eARC.

THIS BOOK!!! This historical fiction debut novel was told in an interview format following a famous rock ‘n’ roll duo from the 1970s. On the night of their biggest performance to date, the rival band from their record refuses to play without their beloved Confederate flag and Opal stands up against them and 45 years later one editor wants to get to the bottom of what happened as Opal & Nev are on the verge of a reunion tour.

If I could choose one word to describe this book it would be transportive. The descriptions just felt so real and I felt like I could picture the concerts and the outfits and the album covers and I just felt like I was there at a concert or reading about a real band. The social commentary in this book was really powerful and extremely relevant. Also it was a debut (!!!!) like I will read anything this author writes!! I really want to listen to this on audio because I think it would be so so good!!

You know it’s a great book when you’re so so angry at the end that you can’t go and google the band and the people to see everything and listen to the music. It just felt that real!

This was a good read. It is reminiscent of “Daisy Jones and the Six” (which I also enjoyed), but it focuses on a punk, interracial music duo throughout the backdrop of various parts of American history. While it has some slow moments, telling the story through interviews and articles allowed the story to be shared from various viewpoints, which I think enhanced the story. I enjoyed the plot and how politics and race weave their way into their music and the industry workings. I just could not really find much support in the book for a true connection between Opal and Nev that would have allowed their group to function for the time that it did. Nonetheless, I did enjoy this and rate it at 4 stars ⭐️. I could see this translating well into a mini series. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy.

Dawnie Walton’s The Final Revival of Opal & Nev draws the reader into a completely unique and immersive experience. The story is seamlessly woven through many different characters’ voices across cultures and continents. Opal is the heroine you’ve always wanted, searching for love while finding herself and her voice. There is something for every reader in this book and it‘s unlike any book to come before it. The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is a must-read!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster / 37 Ink for an advance copy of this ebook. I loved it so much I ordered my own hardcover copy already!

The Final Revival of Opal and Nev is the Behind the Music episode of your dreams. Told as the fictional oral history of proto-Afro-punk legend Opal Jewell and British singer-songwriter Neville Charles, the book has lots of satisfying, page-turning show-biz drama, but also lots of honest-to-goodness heart, and wow, does its politics ever feel timely in this year of racial reckoning.

The ubiquitous point of comparison is Taylor Jenkins Reid, both for Daisy Jones and Evelyn Hugo. This makes sense: like Evelyn Hugo, Opal and Nev is a showbiz story narrated by a journalist with a personal stake in the events. (If you like Reid’s work, this is a no brainer, you should read this book now!)

Without giving too much away, Opal and Nev’s fledgling musical partnership gets tested when violence erupts at a turning-point performance, forcing everyone to make decisions about who they are and what they stand for. Decades later, surprising truths about those decisions emerge in the lead-up to a big Coachella-like festival reunion performance, revealing the trade-offs everyone considered making when the dramatic events pitted the promise of fame against human decency.

I particularly loved the book's real musical and cultural touchpoints, several of which sent me scrambling to Google to learn more. I’d not heard of Max’s Kansas City, for instance, or Josephine Baker’s performance at the Battle of Versaille, or the unrest at the Altamont Free Concert; I enjoyed the Wikipedia rabbit holes this book sent me down. These cultural and political touchstones make the book feels like it lives in the real world, but the hippest possible version of that world.

(On the flip side of this, there’s a brief section of the book where real people are fictionally quoted, and that section did not really work for me; hearing, for instance, Quentin Tarantino talk about the importance of the fictional music took me out of the story a bit, because it felt jarring to have real people saying made up things-- since so much of what I liked about the book was the way it lives in the real world.)

The other extremely minor quibble is that the editor’s notes--footnotes, too!--could briefly sandbag the book’s considerable pageturner momentum. The journalist narrator had to share facts to move things forward, but I felt my attention dragging during those exposition-heavy sections, eager to get back to the interviews, and the charisma of the leads’ own voices.

So hey, maybe you can skip some of the footnotes, but don’t skip this book; I expect this to be one of my favorite reads of the year. This book is so much fun and so satisfying. It asks interesting and timely questions. Opal and Nev builds a lovely, complicated, stylish little world to escape to, a world that reflects its complexity back on our own turbulent times.

I was interested in this book because I saw that the format was oral history. I really enjoyed Daisy Jones & the Six and had been looking for a book with a similar style. Did the book feel too much of the same? Absolutely not!

Nev Charles is a British singer/songwriter looking for someone to make music with him. He notices Opal singing in a Detroit bar and this is how they form a duo. Even though the book names both Nev and Opal, the book really focuses more on her story. In 2016, due to the possibility of the duo reuniting, one of the characters, S. Sunny Shelton, is working on gathering information about them and people surrounding them by form of interviews.

What I really enjoyed about this book was that, contrary to Daisy & Jones, I felt some of the topics discussed are very relevant in our society (apart from sex and drugs). A topic it touches upon is racism across the years and it is something we can still see today. I enjoy books that navigate these difficult topics and allow conversations to be had since it is still relevant. Additionally, I think the book style worked really well. By describing also what was going on in America while the story was developing, the reader can feel like these were not fictional characters

One thing I didn’t enjoy was the pacing of the book. Some areas were really slow and too detailed which made me want to skip ahead. This is minor compared to all the great aspects of the book.

Overall, this debut novel was fantastic and I can’t wait to read more from Walton. Four stars! Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this ARC in exchange of my honest review.

Riveting story of a duo's rise to fame and their fall. Storytelling in an oral history format, emotional and heart wrenching. Themes of addiction, stardom, and infidelity. An interesting and innovative read in the footsteps of Daisy Jones and The Six.

I know that I am in the minority but I am really not a fan of the oral history format and I hated Daisy Jones and the Six. I decided to give this format another try by reading The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. While I still disliked the disjointed nature of this style of writing I did like this book more the Daisy Jones and the Six primarily because I found the characters that Walton created to be very captivating especially Opal who was fierce and not afraid to break societal conventions and say what she really feels.

The biggest reason why I rated this book four stars was the I disliked the portions that focused on the editors notes. While I felt that Sunny was a well developed and strong character I felt that the editor’s notes detracted rather than added to the story. I was glad that I read this book all of the way through because the powerful ending of the book will stick with me.

ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.