A great story told from a unique perspective. The oral history narrative made this book incredibly readable. This story, while about a band and its “life” is so much more because of the elements of race and racism and how they are interwoven into the intricacy of the story. When you have an interracial band, in the 70’s, how can it not be about race? The tale of Opal and Nev is so sophisticated, robust, and sometimes sad that I could not put it down.

I have been waiting to read this book for a while and was so happy to run across it on NetGalley! It was well worth the wait too! This is a wonderfully griping story that will suck you in and you'll quickly find it hard to put it down.

Tackling a topic as tremendous as the music industry of the past sixty years then add in racism and feminism and you have the makings of quite a story on your hands. In her new work of historical fiction, #The Final Revival Of Opal And Nev, author Dawnie Walton proves she is more than up to the task. A quick note here about this reviewer. I am 71 years old and from Toledo',Ohio, a stone’s through away from Detroit’s international sister, Windsor and well within listening range of the Motown infused music of legendary AM radio station CKLW. What a marvelous soundtrack for my formative years. In fact, it was so influencing that from 1973-2004 I was co-owner of one of Toledo’s top record stores. I mention these facts to show I have about a thirty year age lead on Ms. Walton and, by my standards attest that she has done her homework well - this book rings true from start to finish. Although the book is, in title, the story of songstress Opal Jewel and songwriter/musician Nev Charles', for me this was primarily Opal’s tale. The book is packed with colorful characters and antidotes,but it is Opal’s je ne sais quoi that jumps her off the page. I must admit that throughout this entertainment every time Opal was front and center I heard Nina Simone singing Mississippi Goddamn. Please correct me if you disagree. # The Final Revival Of Opal And Nev is a remarkable time capsule of an era that will live on forever, made even more remarkable in that the author didn’t live through much of it.

I was really intrigued by this once I saw it followed a similar oral history format as Daisy Jones & The Six. I would say this one includes more interjections by the interviewer / fictional author, as she herself is entwined in the story, which worked well and made the format feel more personal.

This is a story about music, about racism, about media and the public and the way we treat women vs. men and BIPOC vs. white people. While it covers a lot of ground profoundly, at times I wished the central message was more focused on one particular theme. The pacing also felt off for me; there was so much setup at the beginning of how Opal and Nev came to be (close to the first half of the book) that the ending and reunion show felt a little rushed (and I spent a lot of the book thinking they'd achieved a lot more success as a duo than Nev had as a solo act).

Still a very good read that I would recommend! And I just really, really wish Opal Jewel were a real person because she sounds like an absolute badass and we could use more women of color like her in this world. Thank you Dawnie Walton to bringing her to life.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

I rate this book 3.5/5 stars. I really enjoyed the oral history and the way it was written. I really enjoyed getting to hear different characters and think Dawnie Walton did a really good job giving each character a different voice and personality.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is about a young black woman who partners with Nev, a white European man to create music. S. Sunny Shelton is a journalist who is creating a story about both Opal and Nev and wants to write an oral history of their lives. Sunny, is the daughter of the late Jimmy Curtis who was the drummer for Nev and Opal, she wants to find out more about the night her father was murdered during a protest.

I will say it again, I really liked the characters that Dawnie Walton created and how they each have their own voices. I think she wrote a great story with a lot of very delicate material. This novel navigates, racism, women in music, identity and equality. I think for a debut novel this was really well done. I do think the first half was very fast paced while the second half really slowed down for me. I did like that this story wasn't what I thought it would be like and took me by surprise. I look forward to seeing other work by Walton.

I loved this book so much! I love stories about pop culture, especially about the music scene. It took me a little bit to get into because I can have a hard time with the interview format, but once I got into the storyline, it stopped mattering because it was quite the ride. I also enjoyed the breaks from the writing style with the editor notes to help drive the story. I did not expect the story to be a suspense novel going into it, but the way the interconnected stories and faulty memories flowed together made it that way instead of just a journalistic type tale. I am glad that there is a book coming out that focuses on the hardships a black, female musician faced on her rise to fame, especially after the hit Daisy Jones and The Six. I cannot wait for everyone to get their hands on this.

The novel was written in an unexpected way. I enjoyed the constantly changing points of view because as a reader, I felt I got a well-rounded perspective of how Opal and Nev grew into the people they came to be, and not just from themselves, but also from the people closest to them. At times, it was as if the characters were having a conversation with each other in their changing parts. There is additional context provided to the situations portrayed in the novel, and it gave me the sense I was reading a documentary. It was crafted creatively.

Opal, ebony-skinned, bald, outrageous dresser, experiments with a punk musical style. Nev, pale, British, ginger-haired, is more mainstream. Combined, they present a stark contrast which seems to promise a successful career for these two “outsiders.” Taking part in a production showcase, which unfortunately attracts diverse groupies and fans, instead of glory, they experience a brutal murder of her lover, their drummer Jimmy, a married man expecting his first child. Their stories are framed by a series of interviews conducted years later by a newly-promoted music industry editor, Jimmy’s child. Dawnie Walton gives her readers a trustworthy narrator in Sunny who seeks the truth about the character of the father she never knew and what really happened that night. Following the story of this duo, we witness their complete self-absorption and lack of concern for how the lives of those around them are altered. With the opportunity to reunite once again pending, we read contrasting accounts and like Sunny seek answers. What happened that night? Who carries the guilt of Jimmy’s death?

As riveting as any rock n roll biopic you've ever read/seen, this book seems destined for the big screen. It's the coming together of two dynamic forces - Opal, the talented Black girl who's dealing with spending part of her life in the Jim Crow South and Nev - a white British boy. The book chronicles the rise, the inevitable fall and the reunion of these two forces in their Afropunk collaboration. It's particularly poignant given the complexity of the Black experience in America, both in the past and present. Do yourself a favor and read this book. You won't regret it.

The Final Review of Opal & Nev reads as an oral history of a flame-haired Britain and a AfroPunk black women that form a duo that storms New York city in the early 70's.

S. Sunny Shelton, music magazine editor, traces the the rise and fall of the short lived group, and their tumultuous gig that took her father, Jimmy's life. Shelton literally pieces together the night he died with interviews from the wild cast of characters involved with making of the music. She thought she knew the story leading up to the infamous show but as she digs deeper, a revelation from an unexpected source threatens to blow-up the renewal of friendships.

The book also provides glimpses into Opal's life from her childhood in Detroit to womanhood where she pushes the norms of fashion and attitude. Embroiled in duo's stardom are race relations and the Black Panthers in the 1970's and then again in their comeback thirty years later in the Black Lives Matter movement. The book looks into the real history of violence against black people with this fictional duo in a heartbreaking, beautiful manner.

"Because the more things change, the more they stay the same - that's what Jimmy would say. What's the same right now is I'm still pissed off....and white people, be warned. You still can't say n*****". - Opal

It is captivating debut novel with a strong black female protagonist that is absolutely worth the read.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC for an honest review. Publication date March 30, 2021.

This is one of the best novels I have ever read. It’s one of the few books that I can say made me think about society and what role I play in it. This is also the first book where I understood the slow narrative of the first half of the book was intentional and actually served a purpose that helped define the second half of the book where the depth of the narrative becomes more compelling. It is also one of the few books where I had to put my book down after a huge plot reveal because I needed to digest the information I had just read.

Like others, I picked this book up because of my love for Daisy Jones & The Six. The storytelling is done in a similar format reminiscent of watching a music documentary and that’s about where the similarities end between the two. Daisy Jones was more about the emotions and intricacies of the bands’ relationships whereas Opal & Nev is about the emotional impact racism has played over the past 50-60 years in the United States.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is an incredibly moving story that follows Sunny, a Black editor and journalist, who is writing a book about the multircial rock and roll duo Opal & Nev. The story interweaves Sunny’s personal ties with the overarching story of Opal & Nev’s music history while also making a statement about music’s influence and impact on the larger society, especially surrounding race. Walton does a phenomenal job of portraying a variety of characters that range from Opal’s push against the white men in her life to receive equal treatment as her white male counterpart to the Confederate flag’s symbolism for a Southern colleague.

One critique I do have is that I think the relationship between Opal and Nev was glossed over. It never felt like they were as close as was claimed.

Overall, I loved this book for it’s beautiful story and commentary on a variety of social issues.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is written in an oral history format - bouncing back between the past and the present. It is the story of two musical icons, Opal Jewel and Nev Charles, and how they got their start in the industry, what caused the breakdown in their duo act, and where they are today. It is also the story of Sunny, the music journalist writing the oral history, and her life-long connection to Opal & Nev.

Though dubbed "historical fiction", this novel is incredibly timely and the final act of the story ends up in present day. A huge theme of the novel is racial discrimination and racial violence - and the sad reality of how little has changed from the 60s/70s to present day. I highly recommend this book - it both covers important topics while also being a fun look at music culture and celebrity culture.

Walton's "The Final Revival of Opal & Nev" takes the tact of telling the story through a series of rock journalist interviews with a former musical duo who had a brief claim to fame as a duo and their promoters, managers, and family members. Opal & Nev were an Afro-Punk seventies duo combining the work of Nev, a British singer-songwriter from Birmingham, England, with a skinny bald militant African-American woman out of Detroit. What Walton does do well here is makes fiction seem like journalism. It's so real that perhaps at some point you'll find yourself checking Wikipedia to see if this duo ever existed with Nev going on to solo success and Opal fading into cult obscurity until the big reunion concert decades later. The journalistic interviews curiously are done by the daughter of a fictional drummer of the outfit who Opal had a loud proud affair with, Jimmy, and who we later find died tragically in a riot. This gives the interviews a personal vested interest.

The techniques used here worked best at through the first third of the book, particularly as we are introduced to the childhoods of the main characters and, once again, they feel so real, so authentic, that it doesn't feel like fiction. You hear how innocent and vulnerable Opal is when she comes to New York to make her debut.

The climax of the book is a concert that became a sort of Altamont II with its own band of Hell's Angels type bikers causing untold havoc and death. The author manages to shoehorn in a controversy about the confederate flag as the cause of the riot, showing to an extent how one side (Opal) found it completely offensive for what the Confederacy stood for and the other saw it a symbol of rebelliousness like the General Lee car in Dukes of Hazard without regard for its deeper history. Of course, neither side can hear each other.

Although the final third of the book drags a bit, particularly when compared to the beginning of the book, that is often do with real life stories as the most exciting parts are often about the rise to stardom.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. A wonderful set in the 1970s music scene. Raw, gritty and honest. What amazes me is how far we have come, but so little has changed. Highly recommend.

4.5 Stars

Shared from multiple perspectives, this story centers around a young Black woman named Opal Jewel and the people in her life over time. A Once-Upon-A-Time story of a young, talented, daring Black woman with a promising future in the 1970’s who joins British Neville Charles and his band, their meteoric rise to fame, a fame that ended almost as quickly as it began. One of those groups that rises meteorically, but dissolves unexpectedly, virtually overnight. A catastrophic episode at a concert ends in the death of their drummer, Jimmy Curtis, at the hands of a group of racists that attended to see the band that was set to close the night in 1971. The controversy that follows that night makes them untouchable and they go their separate ways.

Years later, magazine editor S. Sunny Curtis, daughter of drummer Jimmy Curtis, hears a rumour about the possibility that Nev and Sunny plan to get together to perform for a 2017 reunion concert.

Shared from the perspectives of Opal, and her half-sister born two years after Opal, Pearl, as well as Sunny, their stories eventually merge into one story with a uniquely epic ending. Opal’s father, an older man, died before she was old enough to have any memories of him, and Pearl’s father was killed during the war in Korea. Near the beginning of this story, Opal shares their story of their love of singing in the church choir, a love that obviously led to more, their Pastor referring to Opal as a ’tiny wisp of a thing, real chocolate-skinned and swaying side to side… Little Miss Showboat. That was Opal. That is Opal.’

Sunny is working on writing a book about her father’s story, and the story of Opal and Nev’s partnership, the band, and the ultimate unfolding of the horrifying event that took her father’s life, adding another perspective.

There is much more to this story than the concert, and this does have some elements that on the surface are similar to Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six, but while there is that shared element of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll at play, as well as it being shared from varying perspectives, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev tackles the more sinister topic of racism, so while they shared certain themes, this isn’t quite as lightly entertaining, although it is thoroughly engaging - if horrifyingly relevant. This story will undoubtedly stay with me longer.


Pub Date: 30 Mar 2021

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Simon & Schuster
#TheFinalRevivalofOpalNev #NetGalley

As far as I am aware, Daisy Jones an the Six introduced a style of writing that imitated a non-fictional narrative style while telling a fictional story about a fictional band. The Final Revival of Opal & Nev takes that stylistic narrative and brings it to a whole new level! When I tell you I will be gushing about this book the rest of my life, I mean I will be gushing about this book the rest of my life! This is even more engaging, more profound, and I was just wow'd by it from beginning to end.

The characters just jumped off of the page, the narrative style was one I was already predisposed to like, and the overall plot was just good each step of the way. It was constantly building and constantly had me ready to pick it up to read. It is a long read, but it never lags. Each page is brilliant. Each page felt like there was the possibility that this could be non-fiction and this band felt like a real band. The events also were horrifyingly real. The characters themselves could have been real, living and breathing people.

This is a book I already plan on reading again in the future. I only do that with books I really love. This is one of them. The thing that is unique about this one is that I knew I was going to love it from the first page! The first page was just a car revving up for a win towards the finish line and I was there for the ride. Just pick it up to read the first couple of pages and I promise you will be sucked in ready to see where the narrative is going to take you.

A promising debut. Complex plot. Engaging, vivid characters. Compelling prose. Important themes.

This book captured my attention from page one. I did not think I was going to enjoy, it but I found the lives of the characters and how their stories intersected to be very interesting! I really liked reading about the main character/author as well and was glad to see that she was able to fill in the blanks on a lot of things from her past regarding how she grew up. My favorite person in the book was Opal. Her childhood was very interesting in my opinion. I was able to read this book quicker than I imagined because it held my interest from the beginning to the end.

Wow, this was a great book released at an important time in the world where we are battling same issues the main characters in this book. Final Revival of Opal and Nev takes place over a wide span of years from 1960's to current day. For me this distance brings into focus how much the issues from the past are still prevalent today. Almost as if a magnifying glass was put over the issues and bringing them into focus for us to see more clearly.

Dawnie Walton evokes true emotions with her narrative of Sunny and Opal’s relationships. In an interesting turn, not exactly a twist, but Sunny's desire for information about her father almost transfers that parental approval to Opal. I loved how this relationship evolves and transforms throughout the book.

Music in central in this as title implies – this is a story of a white boy and black woman joining to form a unique, to the time, punk rock duo.Descriptions of the music, beats and bits of lyrics had me wishing I could listen to the songs.
The story introduces an extremely talented black drummer who was brutally beaten for the most part for simply being black and at the wrong place at wrong time. This leads to highlight the connection between the riot in 1970 at one of their concerts to Sunny's character, who was chosen to write about this punk duo from 60’s in the 2000’s. Would there still be an audience for their unique sound? Will they be fully accepted on talent alone and not have race play a part?

I admire how openly honest and vulnerable the writing of this book must have been especially in current racial atmosphere. This is a good book that sadly shows how much work is yet to be done with regards to racial equality. Read it and then take the time to be present in your life. Look around, stand up for what's right, call out what's wrong. Help make the world a more peaceful unified place for all.

I was given an advanced copy to read from netgalley,in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed above are mine alone and have not been influenced by anything or anyone. Thank-you to Simon & Schuster for allowing me to read this advances copy uncorrected proof.

I loved Daisy Jones and the Six - it’s oral history format just really worked for me. So, I was anxious to see what Walton would do with it. Well let me tell you, she moves it up a notch. This is so much more than the story of a musical duo. It’s the story of our times.
The writing is something special. “That’s what the South was like for me. Sweet on the first taste, but something gone sour underneath. It’ll try to trick you, now - the sugar berries and the quiet and those lovely spread out houses. But after that day with Auntie Rose, I could smell the rotten, too.”
Walton totally nails the time and the place. She intersperses just enough of what was happening in the real world to anchor the story. But beyond that, I felt like I was in the recording studio, the initial concert and at the reunion.
Opal and Nev are both fully fleshed out, with all the strengths and faults. I loved watching how their different decisions led to how their careers and lives played out. And let me just say, I wasn’t expecting this to be suspenseful, but boy, was it. As the story progresses, I couldn’t wait to see how it would play out. The story rings true. By taking us through the years, we see how little progress we’ve made. Put this one on your radar. I’m convinced it’ll be one of the hits of 2021.
My thanks to netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an advance copy of this book.