This was a quick little read that would be pretty good for a new Taylor fan! As a fan since the early days, this didn't provide a ton of new information, but the behind the scenes stuff was fun. The time jumps in the chapters are a little confusing, I wish it went era by era instead of jumping to the future/past during certain parts. Some of the name pronunciations also caught me off guard, such as John Mayer being pronounced like Meijer. Overall, quick easy listen.

Thanks NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the arc.

This unauthorized biography is well done. It was an easy listen, not just from a production/narration perspective, but also because of the context provided throughout.

If you are an avid Swiftie, there won’t be much new information here--though notably I learned some things about the start of her career. For this reason, I would recommend this more for general audiences and those who are neutral on TS (or those who are—with a somewhat open mind—trying to understand the super-stardom Swift has achieved).

That said, if you are anything like me, you’ve heard Swift’s story in pieces. In news articles, in Tik Toks, in tweets, and, mostly, in songs. There is something valuable about collecting her story in one spot, and telling it somewhat chronologically.

Obviously, the author has an interest in Swift, but attempted neutrality here--with a few exceptions. She doesn’t necessarily try to convince us how to feel about Swift, but instead draws on the online archive of the singer/songwriter's history, quoting Swift and those in her orbit, and cataloguing the singers many achievements along the way.

This biography by Caroline Sullivan dives deep into the incredible career of Taylor Swift. It chronicles her rise from country beginnings to global pop icon, delving into her artistic evolution, high-profile relationships, and the stories behind her beloved songs. Each era of Swift's career, a defining characteristic of her artistry, is explored in detail, giving fans a deeper understanding of her influences and creative process.

While the synopsis paints a glowing picture, it feels a touch biased especially when discussing her relationships (*cough* the whole sidebar that it's unbelievable to suggest Harry Styles might have been a PR relationship?). However, Sullivan's background as a music journalist suggests a well-researched and informative read. As I listened to the audiobook, I can't comment on the quality of the "stunning photographic section" mentioned, but for any Swiftie, this biography promises a comprehensive look at their idol's remarkable journey.

While I am in no way a hardcore swiftie I have been a fan for the majority of her career. I think this story put together a great look into Swift's musical process and what she has accomplished over the past 11 albums and 4 records. I would recommend this book to fans who may be similar to me and know her for music and not so much her life and journey to becoming one of the best female artists of our time. My one negative to this book is that sometimes I felt sometimes the timeline would jump around hitting on other eras without completing the one we were on and sometimes I felt that we spent too long on other people in her life than I personally felt that we needed to.

The narration was great and overall I felt it was a great read for the casual fan that may be more interested in Swift's process and drive.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Caroline Sullivan for letting me listen to the audio early! The opinions in this review are those of mine and mine alone.

For those of us who discovered Taylor Swift and her music after Taylor’s rise to fame, it might appear appear impossible to track back her steps and understand what made her the icon she is today. Luckily for us, Caroline Sullivan put together the singer’s (unauthorised) biography and made it available starting this month under the title “Taylor: Era by Era. The Unauthorized Biography”.

Narrated by Katelyn Levering, the book takes us on a journey back all the way to the start of Taylor’s career as a musical prodigy, going through all of her endeavours to becoming a signed artist with record labels, writing her own songs, and what is now known as one of the greatest concerts of all times, the “Eras Tour”.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and the editorial team for giving me the opportunity to review the ARC in audiobook format and to you, my reader, for taking the time to read this honest personal book review.

If you are interested in other of my book reviews, make sure to follow me on GoodReads! #TaylorErabyEra #NetGalley #LifeLongLearning

I wouldn't call myself a swiftie, but i have followed Taylor's career like most millennials. you really can't be in the world and not know something about her. This book was a really fun and interesting walk through Taylor's career. I love that it is up-to-date. It gives excellent backstory for all of her songs and her 'eras'. I'm pleasantly surprised by this book. Highly recommend.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This was good overview of Taylors career and very fact driven, However, it lacked a little bit of life to me. There was lots of Taylor lore sprinkled in and a timeline of her life.
If you aren’t a crazy swiftie you will definitely learn a lot but if you do know Taylor, this wont be new for you.
The title is Era by Era and I’m not sure if that 100% correct as it did jump around a bit and wasn’t definitively divided into the “eras” as they are known (like the different albums) and more the literal eras of her life. Just a thought but could be misleading?
I think the narrator did a great job and kept me interested throughout.

Thanks to Netgally and dreamscape media for providing me with an ALC for this book. All opinions stated are my own.

I don’t think I’d go as far as calling myself a “Swiftie”, but I am a fan of Taylor Swift! The first concert I went to of her was the eras tour and I grew up only knowing some of her songs. The boom went into an in-depth review of Taylor’s life and music career. It was mostly all new information to me! I enjoyed listening to the audiobook. I’m sure every die hard Taylor fans would learn something.

Thank you Dreamscape Media for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

There's nothing groundbreaking here, but this is a good book for a new Swiftie, documenting a ton of lore in a chronological timeline. It's quite obviously supportive of Swift, and presents a positive view of Swift's work ethic and business savvy. Make no mistake, this is not a book if you're looking for a deep dive into the cringe-worthy gossip surrounding Swift's relationships (both platonic and romantic), other than what Taylor herself has confirmed as true. This book centers much moreso on the professional journey, highlighting Swift's strengths as a businesswoman, and the decisions she made throughout her career that have served to catapult her to the near-untouchable status she's achieved. Having listened to the audiobook version provided by Netgalley, my only real criticism is some odd pronunciations of words (like "ubiquitous" being pronounced with an "oo" sound". Other than that, the narrator has a chipper, almost anchorwoman-like voice and pacing.

This book delivered on exactly what it said it would: it was a biographical look at Taylor Swift's life, era by era. I have been a casual fan of Taylor's since I heard Bon Jovi rave about her on radio in 2007 but a Swifie only since the pandemic, so I was interested in a good recap of her biography. I enjoyed listening, the narration was really good, it just didn't really include anything I didn't know.

With Taylor Swift I feel like you really needed to go one of two ways: an official biography (which i think is premature since she's only in her mid-thirties) that Swifties could obsess over it and scour it for easter eggs, or a speculative piece that's less straight biographical and more something looking into her actual music, the lyrics, what they mean, who they're about, ect. The former would be a definitive telling, the latter a bit of a discussion starter about relatability like so many of the popular podcasts about her. This book kind of falls in between those two. It's a breakdown of how she got started, what she's done in here career, and where she is now.....but without the official personal details or the emotion that makes Taylor Swift so popular and relatable. For that reason, I'm not really sure who the audience for this book is. Swifies know all this stuff and it doesn't really give them anything new to discuss.

That being said, again, this book delivered on what it said it would. It was a very solid look at Taylor's whole career from childhood to now and the author did a very good job of being comprehensive and addressing all of the critical and interesting pieces of Taylor Swift's career without making it boring or overly detailed. She included all of the necessary information, and I didn't feel like she missed anything, nor did I feel like she included anything that could have been left out. It was a really good job of being thorough without getting bogged down by details. It moved quickly through the eras, almost exclusively linear which was great, and just hit all the marks. Ultimately, I think this book is probably best for parents or friends of Swifties who don't really understand the appeal, or people who don't know much about Swift and would be interested in learning how she went from small town girl to the billionaire queen of pop.

Audiobook provided by Netgalley

I finished reading this unauthorized biography of Taylor Swift, and overall, I found it pretty informative. Most of the facts presented were ones I was already familiar with, but the author did manage to clarify a few questions I had about her career and personal life.

However, I did find the timeline a bit confusing. The author frequently jumped back and forth in time to explain certain events, which often left me forgetting how the chapter initially started. This made the narrative somewhat hard to follow at times.

Despite this, I enjoyed the book and found it to be a nice read overall. It offered a deeper insight into Taylor's life and career, even if it wasn't the most linear or organized biography I've read.

I have received this as an ARC book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This unauthorized biography of Taylor Swift: Era by Era was loaded with information about Taylors career from the beginning. I learned a lot about her writing style and a put together back story of hot topics in the media. This book, because it wasn't written by Swift, lacks a more personable aspect of how she was feeling in those ups and downs of her life. I knew this going in, and I still enjoyed the amount of information in this book. The audio was fantastic and very well done and very easy to listen to. I gave it a 4/5 stars only because I would love to have more personality and less facts about her life.

Being a later in life swiftie, I do have to say I enjoyed this book. Learning about how she started in the industry and how she grew throughout the years made me also admire her so much more. Also all the "conspiracy-theories" and how they have started is still quite funny to me, but it also shows how loyal her fan base is to her.

The only annoyance I had with the audiobook was how the narrator pronounced the dates, very literally saying "On November seventeen" and since there are lots of mentions of various dates, this was very annoying to my brain. I would probably also have liked a little better timeline to the book as well.

Overall I recommend this for any Swift fan, mostly the newbies, because I feel like the die-hards know all the things mentioned in the book already.

Thanks to Netgally and dreamscape media for providing me with an ALC for this book. All opinions stated are my own.

I received a free advanced audiobook copy of this on NetGalley.

I've always loved Taylor Swift, but I didn't consider myself a full-on "Swiftie" because I lacked some crucial insider knowledge. Enter "Taylor: Era by Era" by Caroline Sullivan and now I can consider myself part of the (very large) club.

This is a straightforward, factual, praise-heavy account of Taylor's life in the spotlight from her days in Nashville as a young aspiring country artist to her superstardom selling out huge arenas on the recent Eras Tour. I feel like I "get" it just a little better and dang, T. Swift is pure genius. I've always been a Folklore girly (it hit hard during the dark ages of 2020), but this book helped me appreciate her other eras a bit more. Consider me a 1989 fan with strong feelings toward Red and TTPD as well. See? I have fully bought in...

I’m not a Taylor swift music fan but I like her entrepreneurship of her and was willing to learn more. Unfortunately I didn’t learn anything. All of the info was very common knowledge and I’m sure the “swifties” will find this boring since they know it all and more. I’m sure this book would be good for those with no knowledge of her, but those people are hard to come by.

OKAY - this is not just a five star read because I like Taylor Swift, but honestly a really interesting biography about Taylor Swift’s upbringing & the collection of her eras albums. I loved listening to the production of the albums and why she wrote certain songs. I obviously grew up listening to her music, starting with her first album, and continued listening to her music well into my late 20s, and it never grew old, but grew with me. Lots of facts (duh) that true ‘swifties’ might already know, but I was really intrigued by it all! Learned more than I thought I would & continue to love her music too.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for my audio ARC!

I received an arc of this audiobook through NetGalley and Dreamscape Media.

I gave this book 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I am a Swiftie and love reading about Taylor Swift, but there wasn’t much in this biography that was new information to me.

I did find out some things about her earlier years that I didn’t know. This is a tough one to recommend because of course you’d think people who love Taylor Swift will read it, but many of them will already know a lot of this information. And I’m not sure if this would interest anyone who isn’t obsessed with Taylor Swift.

It is always fun hearing about her so it did keep my attention throughout. And I think Taylor’s story is just interesting in general and good book does a good job of showing it.

I found pieces of this story interesting and liked hearing more about how Taylor as the world knows her came to be. I would have loved more about her childhood and friends. Unfortunately, a lot of of the book felt choppy and repetitive.

Thanks, Netgalley, for the arc/audiobook.

AN ENTERTAINING AND ENLIGHTENING UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY

REVIEW
Taylor Swift is one of the most accomplished musical artists of her time. Taylor: Era by Era covers the evolution of Taylor Swift’s career, her albums, the stories behind the songs, and the behind-the-scenes drama.

As a relatively new fan, I found the book entertaining and enlightening. While long-time Swifties may already know most of this information, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I discovered some new songs and spent a lot of time on Spotify listening to those I had not heard before, and even revisiting some of the ones I had!

Overall, the biography written by author and journalist Caroline Sullivan is positive but does not break any new ground, mainly referencing publicly available information. I would recommend it to anyone who wants an introduction to Taylor Swift and her career.

As a US reader, my only frustration was the use of the European date format (DD.MM.YYYY), and there are naturally many references to dates in the book. My favorite part was hearing about speculations on the subtle and not-so-subtle messages in many of Swift’s songs.

The narrator, Katelyn Levering, did a good job with pacing, tone, and delivery. Her performance kept me engaged throughout the book. I highly recommend listening to this informative book.

Thanks to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher Dreamscape Media
Published June 6, 2024
Narrated Katelyn Levering
Review www.bluestockingreviews.com

This book is perfect for Swiftie fans and non Swiftie fans! This book breaks down her eras and gives a brief overview of her childhood to the current eras. It’s perfect for Swiftie moms who want to get some inside information to win against trivia with their Swiftie daughters! I really enjoyed the information included in this book especially bringing up some information on behind the songs or eras. The narration was done by Katelyn Levering. She was easy to listen to and made this book fun.