McDaniel is a fantastic writer with very lyrical and absorbing prose. The actual story in this book was different than I expected - I thought it was going to be more closely linked to the true story of the Chillicothe six. I was invested at the beginning of the book, but it went on longer than I would have liked. It was incredible brutal and the end felt like it was created mainly for shock value. Still, this book made me think more about people who become addicted to drugs and their circumstances.

Chillicothe, Ohio, is a small rural town, where addiction is kept under the surface, and women keep being found dead in the river.

Arcade and Daffodil are twins, each with one blue eye and one green eye. Their lives are not easy but they have hopes and dreams, and stories from their Mawmaw Milkweed. As they grow and become young women can they turn the savage side into beauty and avoid the grips of those who seek to harm them?

This is simply an incredible book. After the brilliance of Betty I wasn’t sure how Tiffany McDaniel could deliver another story so compelling but she’s absolutely delivered.

The writing is stunning, lyrical and poetic. The characters are absolutely magnificent. The twin protagonists of Arc and Daffy are hauntingly broken yet full of beauty and hope. The women of Chillicothe are seen, despite their addictions and flaws. They are human and given voice and love through the text. And the plot is full of threat and danger.

This is not an easy read - it was inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, deaths and disappearances taken less seriously because of addiction. The savage side is clearly portrayed and there are brutal episodes and depictions. But ultimately, it’s a book to remind us to see humanity in everyone.

Tiffany McDaniel is unmatched. This book is brutal, heart wrenching, and will stick with me for a long time.

This is a beautifully written book , a book of desperation, addiction, violence, of women whose voices have been silenced, whose souls have been killed. It is a hard book to read. It is the book of twin girls growing up in poverty, with addicts for parents and a mother and aunt who work as prostitutes. Girls with talents and dreams and then the story of them as adults. heart breaking 4.5

This book is incredibly sad. I mean, really REALLY devastating on so many levels. The writing is poetic and strange, and there were some moments that were so beautiful in their poignancy. This is a book I will think about for a long time, I just know it.

On the Savage Side is about twin sisters, Arc and Daffodil, who live in poverty in Appalachian Ohio. It flashes back between the past and present as the girls face loss and neglect and battle addictions and hardship as they age into their twenties.

There is also a murder mystery element to this book and some twists and turns. The author based portions of this story on the real unsolved murder case of the Chillicothe Six, where a serial killer was targeting women in rural Ohio.

This story was like nothing I’ve read before. I felt unsettled, heartbroken, upset…lots of heavy emotions. When the meaning of the title became understood, I was floored. Wow. The author reminds me of a female Cormac McCarthy. Her literary fiction borders on horror in its relentless honesty and artfully woven prose that doesn’t look away from the dark shades of life and humanity, choosing to face it head on, instead.

Similar to the novel, Betty, the author’s previous work, this story was a heart wrenching masterpiece. I can’t say it’s a new favorite, or that I’m in a rush to read it again, but it was impactful and has imprinted itself upon me. There are a ton of triggers associated with it, also. So be aware that it deals heavily with drug addiction, child abuse, sexual abuse, and death.

4.5/5 stars rounded up to 5 for this review.

The nitty-gritty: An devastating exploration of woman's place in a world ruled by men, On the Savage Side will haunt you long after the final page is turned.

Tiffany McDaniel has once again crafted a beautiful, moving, heartbreaking story that takes place in her home state of Ohio. On the Savage Side has many of the same qualities and themes as her last book, Betty, but this time the author focuses on heroin addiction and prostitution, framing her story as an homage to six women who were violently murdered in Chillicothe, Ohio in 2014, murders that were never solved. I’m not going to lie, this was a tough book to read at times. McDaniel never flinches from the realities of innocent women caught up in the neverending cycle of addiction and recovery, but her female characters shine with a fierceness that elevates them above the horrors they experience. Some readers may appreciate a list of trigger warnings, so do be aware that On the Savage Side contains the following content: drug use, death by overdose, pedophilia, rape, miscarriage, torture, abuse and murder. However, there is plenty of beauty in this story as well, and I would not have given this book five stars without that balance. 

The story follows twin sisters Arcade (Arc) and Daffodil (Daffy) Doggs, born with fiery red hair and mismatched eyes (each girl has one green eye and one blue eye). Both parents struggle with heroin addiction, and in 1979 when the girls are six, their father dies of an overdose. Raised by their mother Adelyn and their Aunt Clover, their unpredictable homelife is balanced out by the loving attention of Mamaw Milkweed, Arc’s and Daffy’s beloved grandmother. It’s Mamaw who teaches them to crochet, explaining that the underside of the crochet square, where the yarn is tied off and hangs down, is the “savage side,” but by pushing the strings back up, you can make it the “beautiful side.” This philosophy follows the girls into adulthood as they compare their lives to both sides and strive to have more “beautiful” moments.

By the time the girls turn twenty, they’ve fallen into the same destructive patterns as Adelyn and Clover, working at the Blue Hour turning tricks for drug money. It’s during one of their trips to the river to shoot up with their friends Sage Nell and Thursday that Arc discovers a dead woman floating in the river. Her name is Harlow, and she’s the first of six dead women to be found there. Eventually the press dubs the killer the River Man. But who is he? There are a host of suspects, like Highway Man, the local tattoo artist and drug dealer, or Spider, the man Arc and Daffy met as children who changed their lives forever. There’s also John Theresa, who helped the girls hide at a low point in their lives and gave them access to a swimming pool, where Daffy discovered her love of swimming. Even a man named Welt, who rescued Arc from a violent encounter, seems to be hiding something.

As Arc and Daffy spiral ever downwards, and the killer gets closer and closer, the girls wonder if there’s any escape from the savage side, or if the beautiful side will forever be out of reach.

McDaniel beautifully describes the small town of Chillicothe, a town that lives in the shadow of the local paper mill. Day and night, the mill spews poisonous smoke into the air, and this is how Arc and Daffy grow up. The river plays an important role in the story as well, in fact, it’s almost another character. Not only is the river where the killer dumps the bodies, but for Arc and Daffy it’s a place where they can go to escape their lives. No matter that they’re “wearing crowns” down by the river (their term for getting high), but it’s where they can be with their friends, Sage Nell and Thursday, far from the men who hurt them. The author  also inserts short passages told from the river’s POV, passages that describe what happens to the murdered women after they’ve been dumped in the river. It sounds macabre, but I loved the idea that the river was tenderly cradling the bodies, as if to give them dignity after their suffering.

Arc and Daffy grow up in poverty, made worse by their parents drug addiction, and McDaniel describes so many bittersweet moments that broke my heart. For example, the girls never had birthday cakes, so instead they drew pretend cakes for themselves on the floor with markers. The neglect was so hard to read about, as Adelyn is never sober enough to pay attention to her daughters, and when the unthinkable happens to Arc, she neither knows nor cares.

The one shining ray of light in their lives is Mamaw Milkweed, who nurtured their love of stories and art and taught them to crochet. She does her best to protect Arc and Daffy from their parents’ rough lives, but even she can’t keep all the darkness at bay.

The story is full of truly awful men, all of them harmful to the girls in one way or another. Drug dealers, “johns,” men full of violence who go out of their way to hurt innocent women. By the time they are twenty, Arc and Daffy have accepted these men as an inescapable part of life. And as the body count grows, Arc suspects the killer is someone close, someone she knows. The story feels like a murder mystery at times, although solving the killer’s identity isn’t really the point.

The book itself is beautifully designed, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy. Drawings are scattered throughout, foreshadowing what’s to come. For example, a “spider” is used as a symbol of danger, and whenever a drawing of a spider appears, you know something bad is coming next. We also get a medical examiner’s report after each body is found, and McDaniel adds a touch of poetry to these reports, which poignantly humanizes each woman:

GENDER: A reflection of herself

OCCUPATION: Rides among the stars

PROBABLE CAUSE OF DEATH: Letting the devil know her name

There are brief moments of hope, like when Daffy discovers a talent for swimming and joins a swim team for a while. Time spent with Mamaw is always happy, and the bond between the sisters is fierce and unbreakable. One of the things I loved so much about this story is the way the way Arc and Daffy and their friends supported each other and never judged. The times spent by the river, despite the fact that they are high on heroin, were sweet moments when they could dream about a different life. Each woman, in her own way, showed a resilience of spirit that made me cheer them on, even as I was brushing tears away.

This book won’t be for everyone, but readers who are looking for an emotional, hard hitting story won’t want to miss On the Savage Side.

Big thanks to the author for providing a review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. I think I'm done reading for the year because there's no way I'm going to read a book that is better than this one in 2023. Tiffany McDaniel continues to astound me. I loved her first two works and this was no different. The way she is able to use her lyrical prose to tell an important and deeply saddening story is only getting better with time. I am not always one who gravitates towards prose that is lyrical and has a deeper message within but McDaniel is able to write in such a compelling way that I cannot put the book down. Nor can I forget the words she's written on the pages. This is a story about the forgotten, the unloved, and the ignored that cannot be forgotten, unloved, or ignored. I give all the applause to McDaniel for making me feel the emotions that I do not want to feel. This book may be very triggering to anyone who has had drug abuse in their lives and I would proceed with caution if you are going to pick this one up. Recommend to McDaniel fans as well as people who have never read her work. This book was astounding and something I will be shouting from the hills about for a while.

*Trigger Warnings:* Drug abuse & Addiction, Sexual Assault of minors

In July 2016, I read Tiffany McDaniel’s ’The Summer That Melted Everything’, in my review I wrote in part: “There’s so much more to this incredibly moving debut novel than meets the eye with these few words that tell you what it’s “about.” Bigotry in all senses, sexual preference, skin color, abuse, child abuse, HIV/AIDS, aging… and living. Just the day to day of living seems both precious and tenuous in Breathed in 1984.”

In 2020, I read McDaniel’s ’Betty’, which speaks to the desperation, desire to leave, to find a better life. While it begins in Ozark, Arkansas in 1954, the family leaves to live in an old, rundown house that they bought sight unseen, in the southern Appalachia town of Breathed, Ohio.

If you read either or both of those, you’re familiar with McDaniel’s ability to create an almost gothic aura while set in a more present time. Dark and disturbing, but there is also love - if often a dark and twisted love. Set in Chillicothe, Ohio, this is loosely based on six women who vanished in the area in 2015, although this story is set in an earlier time.

This is a story about a place, a time, a family, addiction, sex workers, and women whose lives are lived on the fringes - until they are not. Children whose lives are not lives that any child should be aware of, let alone live through. Any and all dreams they have are shattered - over and over again. As in her debut novel, the day-to-day of living seems both precious and tenuous.

A heartbreaking, intense, beautifully written story of family, love, loss, the darker side of life, and death.



Pub Date: 14 Feb 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, Knopf

This book is haunting, terrible, atmospheric, and sure to get under your skin. I thought it was a pretty incredible reading experience, even though at times I felt the prose was a little overdone and some of the twists were not my favorite. However, think I'll be thinking about this book for a long long time and it really sets a bar for true crime fiction, especially ones that center victims and focus on having a strong POV.

There were various points during this book that I would have a hard time understanding what was going on. It felt that while there was based in reality, there were parts of it that were based in fantasy. Even then, I did find the story to be enjoyable and it held my attention.

I finished this read a couple of days ago and I’m still…hurt.

This book leaves you emotionally raw and wondering just what in the hell we do to our girls in this country. As the mother of a daughter, it hit especially hard. I would to anything to keep her feeling safe and cherished.

But the girls and women in this book are anything but safe and cherished. They are disposable and horrifically abused, yet still keep a little bit of hope and dreams alive. It’s those hopes and dreams that hurt the most.

While there’s beauty in this book, it’s honestly all the ‘Savage Side’ of life.

Not a feel good book, but a book where you’ll definitely FEEL.

5 Stars.

• ARC via Publisher

Thank you NetGalley for the arc! This is one of the darkest, most heartbreaking books I’ve ever read. Tiffany McDaniel has such a unique way with words… they pull no punches and forces you to face the violence women suffer at the hands of society and how the status quo ignores or turns the blindside on the most marginalized and vulnerable communities. It’s easier to blame the victim, to find excuses for the absences, the hurt, the death than acknowledge how the very structure of the system leads to the cycles of abuse.

McDaniel forces to watch the pain and confront it dead in with a language that tattoos itself into your heart and soul and I am so thankful that this writer exists and putting out there these magnificent pieces of literature. A portrait of pain, but ultimately a legend of how the memory lives and survives in the depths of the river that connects us all… I loved this book.

On the Savage Side
by Tiffany McDaniel
Pub Date: February 14, 2023
Knopf
Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for this gift of a book and ARC. I love the writing of McDaniel and when I get a chance to read her, I put everything else down and get to it.
Six women—mothers, daughters, sisters—gone missing. Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this harrowing novel tells the story of two sisters, both of whom could be the next victims, from the internationally best-selling author of Betty.
Arc and Daffy are followed through life and death, addiction and prostitution, through loss and more loss. I am still processing my thoughts on this one, but it is very powerful and haunting.
You need to read this book for yourself!!
5 stars

Lyrical, poetic, raw, heartbreaking, beautiful. Real talk about addiction and the lives addicts live. Making these women real. Daughters, sisters, aunts, and mothers. Living lives I cannot imagine. Writing so beautiful it can only be a Tiffany McDaniel novel. I correspond and zoom with Tiffany once in a while, she is a truly beautiful soul. I will always lay down what I am reading when I receive an ARC from her, and I am never, ever disappointed.

Tiffany McDaniel’s is one of the most underrated authors. This was a contender for best book I read in 2022. I can’t wait for everyone else to experience it.

Twins born into addiction destined for a similar life. A beautiful story of the connection between sisters.

I find this novel difficult to review in fear of sharing too much – there are obviously differing opinions of what is considered “spoiler” material in the literary community. I don’t want to ruin this gem of a novel for future readers.

The author was born in the Midwest and uses her familiarity with the area - its rustic beauty, fickle climate, people, history and folklore to root the story in a small, rural, economically-depressed town buoyed by menial work at the local paper mill, government assistance, or the local drug trade. There are few options for those who choose to call this place home. Arcade (Arc) Doggs, half to a twin sister, Daffodil (Daffy), serves as the adult narrator who recaps her life via memories. In a ‘stacking of the dominos’ fashion, she starts with her childhood with reveals of the adults who failed her, the friends she lost, and the key events and decisions that shapes her destiny.

In some aspects, this story reminded me of a classic Greek tragedy where the heroines are dispensable pawns in a game played by callous gods. Born into a family of addicts, the girls suffer loss and setbacks early in life and are forced into self-reliance much too soon. Neglect, abandonment, verbal and mental abuse, physical and sexual violence become norms for them when their mother and her sister resort to prostitution for money only to disappear into drug-induced dazes for days whereby the girls fend for themselves as best they can. The girls are mere children who can only draw inspiration from books and their grandmother’s stories. They lean on their imaginations well into adulthood to craft stories inspired by warrior women; stories filled with hope, happiness, and bravery as coping mechanisms to survive their ordeals.

While it is easy to surmise that Arc and Daffy are products of their environments; that are other supporting female characters from different walks of life (college students, mothers/wives, etc) who suffer the same fates and have life-long battles with addictions created from everyday occurrences (ex: prescribed pain relief from a late term miscarriage). There is a murder mystery component involving women found in a nearby river which is inspired by true events. Arc and her friends discover the remains of a few and become sleuths and demand justice for these women that society seemingly ignores. To find the killer, they examine the men in their lives and all their violent or perverse proclivities to find clues which at times places them in great danger.

The author writes some beautifully metaphoric passages and blends in random anecdotes and factoids to emphasize patterns and themes. This is a story that shouldn’t be rushed - some passages are difficult to read (there is a lot of violence to children and women), some characters are weird and creepy, some are just evil and perverse, some are just lost. However, this book is informative, timely, and extremely crafty in its tackling today’s headlines: the rampant opioid epidemic in the Midwest; society’s failures (including law enforcement’s) to protect and locate missing girls and women (especially those who are of color, labeled as sex workers, impoverished, uneducated, are in marginalized groups, and those battling addictions).

Well Done!

*Thank you Netgalley, the publisher, and Tiffany McDaniel for my eARC for an honest review. Publication date 2/14/23*

This book is based on a true crime that happened in Ohio. We follow the lives of twin sisters Arcade (Arc) and Daffodil (Daffy) from the time they are 6 years old into their twenties, and the story is told through the eyes of Arc. The twins do not have a good life. With their parents into hard drugs and their father overdoses Arc and Daffy live with their drug addict mom and aunt. Bodies keep turning up in the river and they all have the same thing in common, they are users. Arc, Daffy, and their friends try to find who the killer is but bodies keep turning up. Who will be next?

This book was a very sad and depressing read but also beautifully written. McDaniel did a great job of making you want to reach out and give all the girls a big hug and to root them all on. Check the trigger warnings for this one because there are many!!

CW: childhood sexual abuse.
“The first sin was believing we would never die. The second sin was believing we were alive in the first place.”

In the hands of any other author, this story of Chillicothe daughters Arc and Daffy, twins with mismatched eyes whose childhoods are defined by their father’s death and their mother and aunt’s heroin use and prostitution only to turn to drugs and sex work themselves might have seemed twee and overwritten. But there is something about Tiffany McDaniel; she gives you strung out women who dab blood on their belts because they’re holding back extra to put in the cracks and call shooting up wearing crowns, grandmothers who tell you that the town you live in is a woman lying on her side, “convincing herself she is on the right side of the cross and staying still enough to believe it,” mothers who say that they’re going to feed you to the needle monster or name you Grassy because you moved inside her like a field of grass, and the swelling, flowery prose is just the gift she gives you while she’s breaking your heart.

What things can the heat of fire not destroy? A logical answer; a rational one informed by science and the laws of the universe would be something like brick, concrete, mortar, or metal. A reasonable answer could even be : matter, of course! In the poetic, lyrical mind of author Tiffany McDaniel, however, the answer is this: the strength of a woman.

If you read Betty or The Summer that Melted Everything then you’re already familiar with the way McDaniel uses language to breathe life into her characters, rendering them fully formed and vibrant in their own colors. On the Savage Side is no exception.

The plot of the novel is rooted in the true, still mostly unsolved, case of the Chillicothe Six, a tragic occurrence of six women going missing in Chillicothe, OH between 2014-2015, and in knowing that you think you can brace yourself for the myriad of complex emotions you’re sure to tangle with as you read through – but you can’t. Trust me when I say you will still not be prepared. In the hands of another author, this fictional retelling could go awry, it could feel exploitive or misdirected, but not in the empathetic hands of McDaniel. Instead, this book is a beautiful, powerful, heartfelt tribute to these women who were dismissed when they and their families most deserved to be seen, simply because of the circumstances of their lives.

This heartwrenching story is told from the point of view of Arcade Doggs, the one-minute younger identical twin sister of Daffodil, both when they are just small children and when they are young women barely scraping by. In the darkness of their reality, Arc and Daffodil manage to keep a sense of wonder and imagination in their heart of hearts, undoubtedly influenced by familial folklore and a deep connection to the land where they live. I won’t delve into the plot, as publication day for this gem is still ahead of us, but I will say the women in this book – their way of thinking and seeing the world around them will stick with me for a very, very long time.

The storytelling, the darkness, and the mystery are all beautifully woven together; it left me feeling raw and without the right words to describe what I’d just read for days after – I am still not convinced I’ve found the right words, but I had to try. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Thank you, Tiffany, for reaching out to me with an early copy. I hope this book, and the real women of Chillicothe, get the attention and recognition they deserve.

First, Thank you to the amazing Publisher for this phenomenal approved eARC!
I knew going into this book written by McDaniel's, it was going to be an unputdownable one, but what I didn't know was just how deep, real and raw this book was going to be.
And I honestly believe she couldn't have done any better if she damn well tried!

Just WoW! Tiffany does it again but does it better!

On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel is a beautifully written story inspired by sad true events of the Chillicothe Six.

I really don't think I can give this book justice.
What I do know is I freaking demolished it.
The storyline itself swept me straight up and didn't put me down until the last page. A true page turner.
It's so well written, with sharply observed characters and the kind of fast-paced, twisty plot that keeps you turning the pages.
The characters were well defined and realistic.
Oozes with atmospheric tones, vivid descriptions and pure, haunting emotions.
This is a brilliant thriller. In fact, it's one of the best I've read!

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.