Tiffany McDaniel is known for dark, gritty, hard, and long stories. She is so crafty with her writing that I can’t help but become emotionally invested with her characters. Betty is still one of my all-time favorite books, so there’s no question that I was eagerly anticipating her next novel. On the Savage Side follows twins Arc and Daffy throughout their life. They live in Chillicothe, Ohio and multiple women have disappeared, seemingly victims of the same serial killer. Many of these girls eventually wash up along the shore of the River; all of them seem to be vulnerable, lost, and forgotten girls who have fallen into drugs and prostitution. Because this book is based upon the real cases of the Chillicothe Six, I think this story hit harder…these types of things happen every day to women around the world, and for whatever reason, their lives seem to be expendable. For the families who have lost loved ones, and especially those who have never gotten answers regarding their family members’ disappearance and/or murder, my heart hurt. I think McDaniel gave these women a voice that deserved to be heard. Overall, I was definitely taken away by McDaniel’s storytelling, her characters and their stories, and the way she shed light on tragedies like these. I do think it wrapped up a little too quickly, was a bit longer than was necessary, and felt repetitive at times. A little tighter edit would have made the ending stick a little more powerfully. Regardless, because of the story and McDaniel’s talent as a writer, I would highly recommend picking this one up!

This novel is an absolutely brutal story about addiction and the destruction it causes across many lives.

The author was inspired by the ’Chillicothe Six’, 6 women who disappeared and were murdered in Ohio back in 2010's.

Twin sisters, Arc and Daffy, are born to drug addicted parents and are left to raise themselves after their grandmother passes away. The story follows their lives as the cycle continues when they become addicts themselves. Follows is a life of prostitution and living in the streets.

This novel was beautified written but hard to read. I had to take a break from it and pick up a later book before going back to finish. Still, it's a story that will stay with me.

Tiffany McDaniel is an unbelievable storyteller. Her last book, BETTY, was so incredibly written - but also very intense and hard to read at times. This story is equally raw and emotionally draining, and there were many times I had to put the book down and take a break. This book is not for the faint of heart, with many triggers such as pedophilia, sexual assault, drug use, violence against women. But the author's prose is STUNNING, and she really brings such powerful emotions to your core as you read. I will be reading her next book - and all those to follow!

✨Ｂｏｏｋ Ｒｅｖｉｅｗ✨

On The Savage Side 📚 by Tiffany McDaniel (thank you @netgalley for the #advancedreaderscopy of this book!)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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After reading a cute rom-com book, this book was starkly different and a difficult read at times...

This book was inspired by the true crime story of the Chillicothe Six, a story of six women who went missing in Chillicothe, Ohio in 2015. I went into this book thinking it would be a true crime novel, but instead, I was surprised to see it's an emotional coming-of-age story of twin sisters growing up in a town full of violence, drugs, prostitution, abuse, and poverty, written in a very poetic sort of language I haven't seen many authors be able to write well.
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#winterreads #justread #bookstack #booklovers #alwaysreading #readersofinstagram #bookreview #instareads #goodreads #bookworm #bookaddict #readersofig #bookreviewer #bookaddict #bookstagram

This story is so heartbreaking and beautifully written. I had to put it down a couple of times, not because I didn't want to keep reading, but because I felt the need to think about what I had just read and process it. It will stay with me for a long time.
Inspired by the Chillicothe Six (which I was not familiar with until I read this book), this is not a light read for the faint of heart, and there are many triggers, but if you can overcome those, it is well worth it. I won't soon be forgetting Arc and Daffy.

Many thanks to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor; and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
#onthesavageside #netgalley

Started this book thinking that it was a murder mystery. That is not what this story is about. That seemed like a very minor part of this story. It's about twins and the terrible life they ended up with. It seemed they were doomed from the beginning. It was hard reading about so many tragedies in these ladies lives. Definitely wasn't what I expected.

The writing of this book was so strong and I really loved it. Yet, my reading experience was just not. fun. at. all. due to the dark topics, and made me not want to pick it up every time. But the ending, oh my god, I can’t stop thinking about it. Definitely a read I would recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for sending me an advanced copy.

On The Savage Side is a work of literary masterpiece that is filled with poetry and prose and the unfortunate story of twins Arc and Daffy. The trauma these girls went through was something no child should ever have to go through and my heart broke for them for not having any adults that were in their corner. The book mainly is from Arcs point of view and while it has quite a bit of violence the story is so wonderfully told that I couldn’t stop reading.
Thank you to the publishers and to Netgalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy.

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Tiffany McDaniel, and Netgalley for an advance digital copy. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

On the Savage Side, Tiffany McDaniel's third novel, is loosely based on Chillicothe Six murders. It follows twin sisters Arc and Daffy Doggs as they grow up in Chillicothe, Ohio. The girls are neglected, live in abject poverty, and are surrounded by drug use, addiction, prostitution, rape, and more. On their 20th birthday, while celebrating with a few friends, Arcade and Daffy find the body of a murdered woman discarded in the river. As more of their friends go missing.

Tiffany McDaniel's writing here is lyrical, poetic, haunting - overwhelming. That plus the actual subject matter left me unable to finish this book. The book is categorized as literary fiction and mystery/thriller, but there's not really any of the latter that I saw in the 50% I read. The absence of any real mystery or thriller (though there is a significant twist in chapter three), isn't what kept me from finishing this book. It's how bleak, utterly depressing and hopeless it all was portrayed, with so many examples being repeated over and over. Overall, this is a harsh, bleak tale of women caught in the throes of addiction, selling their bodies just to get by, living in squalor, with no hope of improving their situation and how we as a society generally ignore them.

As someone that suffers from depression, reading is my escape. Reading On the Savage Side was difficult. I didn't look forward to it. It wasn't a book I could read in one sitting and when I was done each day, I was left more depressed than when I began. Despite all this, I still hope to go back and finish, because I feel like I'm missing out on something if I don't.

Trigger warnings - the whole book is essentially one big trigger warning:
drug/alcohol use/addiction, sexual assault, child molestation, rape, murder, domestic abuse, violence

4 stars
Recommended for fans of:
Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Mysteries

4.5 stars. I knew what I was getting myself into having previously read Betty, but damn if this didn’t still surprise me—I audibly gasped at least 10 times throughout reading.

This book is really beautifully written but incredibly heartbreaking. Much like Betty, this book comes with just about every trigger warning possible and is pretty gruesome and bleak. I really loved all the characters in this book—they’re complicated and flawed and this book really gave them their stories in a world that doesn’t. I spotted the twist coming but still was surprised at it and the subsequent ending. McDaniel does not pull punches.

This book has the same flowery language as Betty which did make it a little slow in some points, but overall this is one that will stick with me.

This novel will turn you inside out, and the end will keep you up at night. I found that I needed to take "On the Savage Side" in small bites, but when I wasn't reading it I was wishing I were. Twins Arcade and Daffodil Doggs come from a chaotic and addicted family, with only their grandmother, Mamaw Milkweed, there for them. She fills their lives with beauty and love, all the while reminding them that "in life, there is a savage side and a beautiful side." She uses crochet to show them that while the top of the square looks perfect, but the underside is tangled and messy. The idea is to tuck in the stray threads and awkward stitches to make the savage side the best it can be.

As Arc and Daffy's lives spin into horror, they are always looking for the beautiful side, through poetry, nature, kind relationships with others in their situation. This hope is the most heartbreaking part of the book, and what will keep you glued to the page and invested in their story.

If there were a recent book to compare "On the Savage Side" to, it would have to be "Demon Copperhead," or "Shuggie Bain.". But Tiffany McDaniel's novel is even more heart-wrenching. She's a brilliant writer, and "On the Savage Side" is unforgettable.

Inspired by the unsolved murders of the "Chillicothe Six", McDaniel crafts a brutal yet tender story centered on twin sisters whose friends start disappearing and later turning up dead in the river. Women who typically don't get stories told about them, because they're sex workers, addicts, and dirt poor. Women who don't have many choices because of those circumstances.

The first chapter was very dark. The young twins are with their mother, and it's hard to figure out if they're playing or something darker is going on. It's the latter, and immediately we are scared for these girls, horrified at their mother. The story gets darker and darker. Beautiful prose describes increasingly ugly situations, with hope scattered throughout. The twins have each other, their fantasy worlds, a caring grandmother, and separate passions as they grow up, friends in similar situations. We see what they make of their lives with so little, some relief from the relentless darkness.

By focusing on the women, McDaniel tells a different story than the ones we're used to. Compelling and powerful, but one of the bleakest and most violent books I've ever read. It's going to stick with me for a long time.

My thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

✨Ｂｏｏｋ Ｒｅｖｉｅｗ✨

On The Savage Side 📚 by Tiffany McDaniel (thank you @netgalley for the #advancedreaderscopy of this book!)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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.
.

After reading a cute rom-com book, this book was starkly different and a difficult read at times...

This book was inspired by the true crime story of the Chillicothe Six, a story of six women who went missing in Chillicothe, Ohio. I went into this book thinking it would be a true crime novel, but instead, I was surprised to see it's an emotional coming-of-age story of twin sisters growing up in a town full of violence, drugs, prostitution, abuse, and poverty, written in a very poetic sort of language I haven't seen many authors be able to write well.
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#winterreads #justread #bookstack #booklovers #alwaysreading #readersofinstagram #bookreview #instareads #goodreads #bookworm #bookaddict #readersofig #bookreviewer #bookaddict #bookstagram

The fantastic cover for On The Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel made me think of twins or multiple personalities. It made me read the blurb and grab a copy. You can judge this book by the cover, because it tells of what is to come, psychological chills that made many emotions rise to the surface. Sorrow, disgust, happiness, wonder.

In the beginning, and throughout the book, we smell the stink of the papermill. Arcade and Daffodil, along with their mother and aunt, live on the wrong side of town and when it snows, it snows ash from the papermill. I worked at one in Alabama, so I know exactly what she is talking about, the indescribable stench and the car being covered in ash. It creates its own ecosystem.

I was confused, and I believe that was a good thing. It meant I wasn’t able to figure out what the hell was going on half the time. Getting lost in the mind of drug addicts I find unable to describe.

The family are drug addicts, and I think you can guess what everyone thought of them…disposable. When the first girl was found in the river, they rolled right by it. Add another, and another, and another….Who will find out what happens to the lost and the forgotten. Everyone deserves a life, for someone to care about them.

Arcade and Daffodil broke my heart. They pretty much raised themselves, with the help of a loving grandmother who painted a future full of dreams and imagination. Their father had died when they were six years old. Their mother and aunt were sex workers and drug addicts, so that doesn’t bode well for them and their friends. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve being acknowledged as human beings.

Tiffany McDaniel paints pictures, some pretty and some ugly, but she does it with such panache the characters come to life. The evil oozes off the page as much as the sweetness of the girls and the love of their grandmother, who is the most positive person in their life.

Tiffany draws me in deeper and deeper. The more I read, the more involved I get. I cannot say enough about the writing, getting lost in the words. I am having difficulty describing all my thoughts and feelings. It’s wondrous and awful, disturbing and inspirational.

The sketches gave me the creepy crawlies, and that sure fits the story. Six young girls, living a horrible life but finding moments of brightness and love, breaking my heart and for those who preyed on them there is nothing bad enough. Sometimes I saw those spiders moving…my skin crawling and tears in my eyes.

Tiffany McDaniel had me surfing the internet, not only for The Chillicothe Six, but references to other things that made me curious.

I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel.

See more at http://www.fundinmental.com

I really wanted to like On the Savage Side, but frankly, I was mostly confused. There is an element of magic realism, the story timeline changes, the way people talk felt like it was in riddle form for me. I was intrigued to learn more about the Chillicothe murders, but despite trying more than once to get back into this storyline, I wasn't able to. Thank you to the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Apologies that I don't have better things to say!

Sadly, this book was not for me; the writing style is beautiful and the premise is incredibly intriguing and I have never heard of the Chillicothe six and was really interested to see how the book would involve this. However it didn’t have anything to do with this and instead seemed to be more of a depressing memoir of Arc’s life and the many tragedy’s in it, with some murder mentioned occasionally. I think if this was more like the description I would have liked it a lot more, but this was not the book I thought I was going to read. I do think there is an audience for this but it wasn’t me as I expected a mystery/thriller.

“Who do you tell about the demons, when the demons are the ones that you tell?”

The above was the one thing that I thought best summed up the crux of this beautiful yet devastating story inspired by the six women known as the Chillicothe Six. Their murders are still unsolved, and McDaniel has written a story that honors them while they still await the justice they deserve. Folks, you need to be prepared going into this one, it is not an easy read but it is an important and captivating read. Addiction is messy and hard, but it is never that person’s intent to fall into it willingly, and McDaniel does a phenomenal job of capturing this throughout the book.

The story focuses on two sisters, twins Arcade and Daffodil, who are born one minute apart with fiery red hair that matches their personalities, and they are inseparable. They have grown up with their mother and Aunt Clover, both are addicts, and their grandmother lives close by and checks on them regularly. We follow the twins into adulthood, when the first body is found in the river, and as others are found there as well, Arcade is forced to try keep everyone safe (and sober) so no one else goes missing.

I can tell you this will most definitely be in my top reads list for the year, it is such a well written and thought provoking read. It is hard, heartbreaking and tough to get through, but once you do, you will have an appreciation for the addict, the loved ones around them, and an incredible sadness that despite the hope they have, they don’t always move from the savage side to the beautiful side until their life on this earth is no more.

Thank you to PRH Audio for the ALC and to NetGalley / Knopf for the digital galley to review.

On the Savage Side by a Tiffany McDaniel will live in my head for quite some time. A heartbreaking, beautiful look at addiction that raises the question of why there must be an effort to humanize those struggle with addiction. The women of this novel got under my skin, making me feel connected to them, their dreams, and their efforts to escape “the savage side “ of living with trauma, abuse, and poverty. Arc Doggs and her twin sister, Daffy, along with the other Chillicothe Queens speak in poetry, connecting to the feminine power of the earth and sisterhood just as the world works to negate their power. Framed around the real life unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, McDaniels focuses not on the deaths and identity of the killer, but on the lives of the women who others saw as expendable. A searing portrait of opioid addiction in small towns, McDaniel does not shy away from telling the truth of the savage side while painting it with beautiful prose. This book broke my heart. Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the eGalley.

The town of Chillicothe sits along the Scioto River in Ohio, roughly 50 miles south of Columbus, the city in which I reside. I’ve visited the town and remember it well, as I remember the deaths and disappearances of the Chillicothe Six – six women who disappeared between the spring of 2014 and the summer of 2015, many of whom were sex workers and drug addicts. Four were eventually found dead; two have never been located.

So to say I felt an immediate connection to Tiffany McDaniel’s brilliant new novel, "On the Savage Side," would be the truth. I did – instantly – and this connection is why the book will haunt me to the end of my days.

Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, "On the Savage Side" is the story of Arcade and Daffodil, twin sisters growing up in the town of Chillicothe, caught in a familial cycle of drugs and prostitution. Life is by no means happy for the sisters, but they’re surviving. Until one by one, the dead bodies of their friends are found floating in the Scioto River, and Arc and Daffy are forced to face their past in order to outlast a killer.

The women in McDaniel’s novel are victims of the most unforgivable crimes -- parental neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse – all while battling addiction and resorting to sex work in order to pay for the drugs their bodies need. It’s heartbreaking to read and horrifying to imagine. And it’s made even more devastating when their deaths are ignored and deemed not important enough to investigate because the women are addicts and prostitutes.

But they’re people, too. They’re loved by others. They’re mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. And their lives and deaths matter.

McDaniel has written a beautiful and unforgettable novel, one that, as I said earlier in my review, will stick with me. She has given a voice to not only the women of the Chillicothe Six but to women all over the world who find themselves in similar life situations. She puts poetry in their hearts and bares to us their souls.

And to all these women, know that I see you. I hear you. And I will remember you.


My sincerest appreciation to Tiffany McDaniel, Knopf Publishing Group, and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy. All opinions included herein are my own.

I would like to thank Alfred A, Knopf for providing a digital copy of this novel from Tiffany McDaniel. Having read Tiffany McDaniel's previous novel Betty, I was curious whether the author would explore similar themes in this novel. The short answer is yes, she does. They both deal with trauma and explore how unfairly women are treated by everyone in the story. Still, this novel stood out to me more than Betty. The Savage Side uses a real criminal case, The Chillicothe six, to tell the story of two twin sisters raised in Ohio who experience an endless cycle of abuse in many forms. After several of their friends, all women and sex workers, go missing and are later found deceased in the river, the sisters fear they may be next. The women tell everyone around them of the immediate danger their lives are in but their voices are not heard. And ultimately that theme is at the core of this story. The mystery surrounding the identity of the killer becomes secondary to the plight of these women as their concerns are ignored at every level.
Early on, the narrator tells us she will perish. There is a frustrating inevitability that permeates throughout the story-- knowing she as well as the other women could have been saved if only someone had listened. Yet, there is also this light coming from the women. They have dreams and aspirations and in a fair world, would get to see those through. This is the duality of The Savage Side. Women looking at the bright side of life even in the darkest times, even when their fates are sealed by a world that doesn’t care about them. I highly recommend this novel.