*DNF*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley for an honest review.

This one wasn't for me. I chose to DNF.

It isn’t very often that I come across a book so honest and dark that it affects me in such a staggeringly emotional way. On the Savage Side is a powerhouse of a novel that will leave readers speechless. Focusing on generational addiction and poverty, On the Savage Side depicts what it is like for women who are too often discarded by society.

The novel follows Arcade and Daffodil, twin sisters who have witnessed addiction from a young age, and soon find that they unsafe in a town where women are going missing. Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, On the Savage Side tells a story centered around women and the ways they are left vulnerable in a cruel world.

Truthfully I often found myself putting this book aside because it was incredibly heavy to read. The writing and detail were so powerful that I could feel the impact it was having on me while I read. Honest and raw, this packed a punch that even I could not have expected.

While emotional, On the Savage Side is also an important depiction of how addiction consumes a person but should not dehumanize them. Seeing the lives of Arcade and Daffodil spread out on the pages really highlights how the treatment of young girls and women can completely throw their lives off course and cause irreparable damage. This is one book that will stay with me for a while.

Sadly not my favorite from Tiffany McDaniel's books. Still it tackles an incredible important and sad subject that I feel like people will connect to.

DNF @ 34% - This book is excessively dark and bleak, and when a danger noodle (that's right, I don't even like saying/typing the actual word, that's how bad my phobia is) showed up, I was like NOPE! I'm done!

At 34% in they haven't even BEGUN to think about or investigate what happened to the first murdered girl that was found.

Pet peeve: Why is the lipstick on the [US] cover not the same as the way they way their lipstick in the book? (One paints her top lip, the other the bottom lip - not halved vertically as in the cover image).

That being said, at 10% I noted that the author has a very poetic way of writing, and then just now I find out that Tiffany McDaniel is an actual poet. I guess that makes perfect sense then! Her writing style is really beautiful, but I just couldn't get into the bleak story. It's pretty brilliant juxtaposition actually, to have such beautiful writing and wording, for such a sad, dark story.

LOVE! I’ll always read anything Tiffany McDaniel writes. Without giving much away, this book was unputdownable and really shines a light on some important topics especially concerning the treatment of indigenous women. The writing itself is so lyrical and engrossing. 10/10 must read!

This book!! Oh my gosh! I had no idea what was going on and then when I did?? Crazy and such a ride. It was so well written and the story it tells of these missing girls is just haunting. The characters are so well developed and I could just feel all their emotions.
Go into this one without reading too much about it until you’ve finished. The fact that it’s based on true events is even more harrowing.

This is my second book by this author as I had previously read Betty, which I loved.
This offering is similar in its relentless misfortune, and there is no doubt that Tiffany McDaniel is a great writer. This follows twins Daffy and Arc Doggs, in a small town in Ohio, and was inspired by the real-life unsolved murders of six women known as the Chillicothe Six.
It went a bit overboard in trying to be lyrical and surreal with the way the characters all spoke, but it was mostly a beautiful and tragic story , humanising addiction, poverty and trauma.
It is a hard read with many trigger warnings, but McDaniels poetic prose keeps you reading even while things are bleak. Not as good as Betty but I would still recommend as long as you know the subject matter.
Thanks to Netgalley for the arc.

On the Savage Side is a novel about twin sisters, Arcade and Daffodil, who are born to addicts. During their childhood, they are often pulled away from that environment by their loving grandmother – a woman full of love and stories. After a tragic accident that leaves their grandmother dead, the girls are forced back into their home with their parents and aunt and enter the cycle of generational poverty and addiction. Arc and Daffy are working the streets of Chillicothe when the first woman is found dead in the river. One by one, their friends start to disappear and Arc becomes increasingly desperate to save her sister and herself.

This novel left me utterly gutted. It is tragic and bleak and heart-wrenching. McDaniel’s lyrical prose paints a landscape that is beautiful in its brutality and characters who are unforgettable. On the Savage Side pulls no punches and details what life is like for the women who we like to forget exist in our society. The women who we look down upon because of poverty and addiction. The women who are someone to somebody, but whose disappearances and assaults go unsolved because of their station in life.

While this is the most devastating coming-of-age tale that I have ever read, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a difficult read, but well worth the investment of your time.

As many have pointed out, On the Savage Side is a completely different read than Betty. Every content warning possible exists within these pages - it is a dark story about two sisters - Arc & Daffy - based on the very real unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six (six women who were murdered and found in a river, never resolved).

Arc & Daffy are born to two parents struggling with heroin addiction, battling poverty, neglect and abuse, ultimately falling into their own cycle of addiction, too. What I found most poignant about this story is the way that McDaniel narrated a complex, beautiful and poetic inner life for Arc & Daffy - while their external circumstances might be easily judged by society, there was so much more to these characters. In reading some interviews, this is what inspired McDaniel's writing - that ignorant, reductive logic around the life of women who are forced to sell sex inhibited the resolution of the Chillicothe Six.

Structurally, I found the first half a bit of a slog to get through. Part of what I loved about this read is also what made it challenging - sprinkling poetic prose and deep, symbolic reflections amidst the actual story, was challenging. BUT, I'm glad I stuck with it, because THAT TWIST!

2 stars. Very hard time connecting with the characters and storyline. Writing lacked flow and felt choppy. Extremely depressing plot that I couldn’t connect with because I didn’t have an investment in the characters. May be a timing issue. Might try this again another time as I have loved this authors previous work.

Wow, the sadness in this book is relentless.

After seeing the premise and initial reviews of ON THE SAVAGE SIDE, I thought it had the potential to be a 2023 favorite. Unfortunately, this won’t be the case for me, but I am glad I read it. While it’s been over a month since I finished, I still find myself unable to put my finger on why exactly it wasn’t able to cross the bridge from “enjoyed” to “loved.” I did, however, love McDaniel’s atmospheric writing and will be adding her debut, BETTY, to my TBR list based on her excellence at setting and creating a sense of place in ON THE SAVAGE SIDE. I was able to vividly picture each scene in my head while reading.

I believe one of the reasons I didn’t end up loving this is because I was expecting a different type of story and actually didn’t like the “twist” revealed at the end. To me, this twist did not fit well with the rest of the story. This book is also incredibly sad, and I don’t believe the reader is left with any sort of redemption or hope at the end. The sadness didn’t particularly bother me (it was the point of the story), but this is most definitely not for sensitive readers.

Content warning: basically everything you’d need a warning for.

This was a deep and heartbreaking book taking a deep dive into abuse, drugs, sexual assault and more. Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this book follows two sisters along their journey. While a difficult read, it is beautifully written and with care and thoughtfulness. Trigger warnings galore for this one - it is definitely a savage book and not easy to read.

Being a woman is hard.

Being a woman is: “smile, pretty girl” and “never go anywhere without your pepper spray” and “don’t show too much skin” and “c’mon, be sexy, show more skin” and “don’t upset the man” and “here’s the best concealer to cover bruises” and “get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich” and “your hair would look cute in pigtails” and “oh, is it that time of the month” and “you’re such a bitch” and “keep up with yourself or I’ll find a younger model” and “why would I do household chores” and “why do I have to babysit my kid” and “if he yells, apologize” and “you exist to please me.”

It’s be mother, maid, virgin, and whore.

It’s be what every man, everywhere, at every time wants, has wanted or will ever want. As author Tiffany McDaniel puts it, “[Women are] born, then we die. In between, we bleed, we bruise, we fuck strangers, and we go missing.”

I kept trying to put this book down on about 100 occasions, because it’s a really heavy, hard read. There are nauseatingly graphic depictions of abuse, addiction, and violence unlike any I’ve ever read, and McDaniel’s depiction of poverty, trauma, grief, and the generational cycles of all those things is heartbreaking. Every character speaks poetically and wisely, and there were some lines that ripped me into two. I still feel like I’ve been left in shambles days later while writing this review.

The book starts when twin sisters Arc and Daffy are 10 years old and are living with their heroin-addicted, sex worker mother and aunt (their father died of an overdose not too long before) in a house covered in empty cigarette cartons, beer bottles, and other junk. Their mom rarely moves from her mattress, which she has stuffed full of items she’s stolen from her johns, and their aunt sits all day on the sofa watching a travel channel and making tin can telephones out of old containers of creamed corn. The girls each have one green eye and one blue eye — in mirror images — and are constantly told they’re two halves of the same thing. They “had the same laugh. The same smile. The same love of Mamaw Milkweed’s grape jelly. We even wore our hair the same.” One later wears lipstick on her top lip, while the other wears it on her bottom lip. Arc is a budding archaeologist and is so, so smart, and Daffy shows Olympic promise as a swimmer.

They’re not going to do drugs. They’re not going to be sex workers. They’re going to break the cycle.

The tale then alternates with chapters about the sisters at 20, where they’ve succumbed to the same drug they swore they’d never touch and make money the same way the other women in their family do. The two spend most of their time at the river, getting high with their friends Thursday and Nell, when, one day, they spot a dead woman in the river. And then they spot another. While the book is based on the story of the deaths in Chillicothe, Ohio, the book focuses less on who committed these murders and the ones that follow and more on making the point that it could be any of the psychopathic men in this story. As Arc and Daffy’s friends die or disappear one by one into the river and the cops show no interest in solving these deaths, we’re reminded that any woman could be — and has been — the victim of a man.

McDaniel gives all these addicts immense humanity and remarkably intimate characterizations. Daffy is the “keeper of butterflies,” and Arc is “the one who will protect the women from the wolves.” Thursday is “more jewelry than woman” and wears a small stud in her nose that “she told everyone…was a fallen star she’d found on the night the sky remembered her, even if she stopped remembering it.” Aunt Clover never takes off her leopard print collar, is slowly covering a mirror in Scotch tape, and always makes X’s in her blue eyeliner as a kind of barbed wire “so I’m not the one who gets cut. They are.” Nell, “Sage Nell,” quotes philosophy and calls her bra underwire her “pocket knife” and once stood above a crying friend in the rain to be her umbrella. Their friend Violet has lived a “rippling life,” reminds others of images on stone tablets, keeps her hair a color called Purple Wind and is trying to stay sober so she can buy a bakery with blue and pink walls and pistachio counters where her daughter, whom she’s trying to get custody of, can come after school. Indigo, another friend and recovering addict, highlights “line after line in her math books, as if she could find an equation that would solve everything.”

When the sisters were little and lived with their Mamaw Milkweed, she taught them about how, in life, there’s always a savage side and a beautiful side. She illustrated that point by showing the underside of a crochet square and tucking the dangling strings up into the square to make it beautiful. She told them, “When the savage side gets too much… you take a needle a weave the strands in.” Arc later does just that for her sister. Every bad thing gets made beautiful in Arc’s hands. The hands of the man choking their mother become a locket their father gave her; the blood from crushed glass becomes colors spreading from their drawings, and they then dance across the floor spreading the colors like a rainbow; the man who rapes the two when they’re little becomes a spider that gets squashed because no spiders are allowed in their rooms. The smoke from the local paper mill becomes the dust that horses kick up when they gallop so fast they spin the world. An abandoned 1950s convertible becomes Cleopatra’s Time Machine and helps them escape their presents.

This book is a reminder that being a woman is savage, and it’s beautiful.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was one of my most highly anticipated reads for 2023 and IT DID NOT LET ME DOWN. Honestly, we are only three months into the year and I may have found my favourite book of 2023!

In this book we are following twins Daffy and Arc from their childhood where they watch their mother disappear to drug addiction, using prostitution as a way to pay for her habit. Whilst their adult life if far from happy, they have found a sense of community and create their own slices of joy. That is until women begin turning up dead in the river and the police are completely uninterested.

This was a really hard story to read as you really grew attached to the twins and wanted for them to be able to carve out lives for themselves filled with the true happiness that they deserved. At no point does this story entertain any form of victim-blaming but instead paints a very complex picture of generational trauma as well as trauma in general.

One thing that really stood out for me was the feeling of dread creeping up my spine that every single male character in this book evoked. I genuinely don't think there was a single man who didn't give me the creeps.

The twists of this book were actually next level. The first twist was kinda utterly bonkers but when I was going back and reviewing my favourite quotes from this book, I could see groundwork from literally the first line . This is definitely a book that begs for a re-read if only to understand how you missed it on first read. The second twist is a strange one because it might not even be considering a twist but the book leads you in a certain direction then brutally pulls the rug out from under your feet. That one line had to be one of the most heartbreaking things that I have ever read, comparable to The Arrival of Someday or A Little Life.

This book was a little surreal at times but that very much added to the experience and the immersion.

I would highly recommend this book but it isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea because of the surreal elements and caution needs to be taken to look up trigger warnings because it is ROUGH.

Arcade “Arc” Doggs and her twin sister, Daffodil, were born into a family where starting over is unthinkable but not necessarily impossible, and this is what makes this story so disheartening. In the shadow of women without names, Arc’s journey is one of sacrifice, as she knows what the future holds.

"Sometimes you gotta hold on to something to remember it exists,” she said. “And when you remember it exists, you remember to protect it. Keep that corner safe, Arc. It’s part of you."

In starting this story, I was expecting a murder mystery, but that element is more of a backdrop as compared to the tribulations of its characters. Survival requires many layers of insulation and invention, which is prevalent throughout the development of this narrative.

Though I was rooting for Arc and Daffy to break out of their desolate and sad existence, the truth of it all is a heavy burden. There were times when the anger and disappointment was overwhelming, but there were some moments when the characters shared an immeasurable connection. Mamaw Milkweed was the standout for me.

On the Savage Side is about survival in a bleak setting and would appeal to those seeking a story about flawed characters and difficult circumstances.

Thank you to the author Tiffany McDaniel, publisher Knopf, and as always NetGalley, for an advance audio copy of ON THE SAVAGE SIDE.

Twin sisters Daffodil (Daffy) and Arcade (Arc) grow up in Chillicothe, Ohio, raised by a grandmother who makes do with very little and loves them both very much. When she dies, the twins are left to the fates of too many young indigenous girls-- to be raised by addicted gaurdians and abused by the people they associate with. ON THE SAVAGE SIDE is the story of two women's survival in a community beset by bogeyman, with an ending you will never see coming.

This book is a harrowing read because it is so dark, but also because the style is poetic and a bit temporally hazy. Also, the first person narrator is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and at times current experience, memory, and fantasy merge. It makes for a beautiful but challenging read.

I just love how moody this book is. I felt an intense sense of dread the entire time I read, never knowing what would come next, but wanting to get there. The balance of suspense to horror makes for such an engaging read, sometimeseven a little commanding.

Really, this story tells two horror stories simultaneously: the first is the story of abject poverty. The second, of the foul humans who prey on poverty's victims. So much of what makes this book excellent depends on the tension that results from these two stories leaning into each other, propping each other up.

Consider this my trigger warning for drug use, drinking, intoxication, and violence against women, children, and animals

Rating: 🕷🕷🕷🕷.5 / 5 spiders
Recommend? Highly! (See TWs)
Finished: March 31 2023
Read this if you like:
👧🏽 Indigenous writers / characters
👣 Suspense
🔪 Murder mysteries
👤 Mental health rep
👭🏽 Sister stories
🪢 Great twists

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book!

I could pull sentences out of this novel to teach writing. The prose in this story was incredible. The figurative language made me read sentences out loud to my husband.

The content of this book is HEAVY. Not for the faint of heart. Be sure you are buckled up and in for a long ride of uncomfortable thoughts and unsettling content.

"Who do you tell about the demons when the demons are the ones who you tell?"

I'm not sure I'll ever find the words to accurately describe what it was like to read this story.

McDaniel's tale -- rooted in truths -- dug into my skin and burrowed itself deep within me. The powerful stories from the queens within its pages tattooed their pain with a permanence across my mind and demanded my attention long after the final page was devoured.

Based on the still unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this truly harrowing narrative delved into generational trauma and addiction unlike any story I've ever encountered. The pain, disappointment, heartache, and loss felt like it was my own due to the vivid and detailed writing style of McDaniel. Unafraid to hold back, this book definitely doesn't dance around its title. It's dark. It's haunting. And it will be difficult to forget.

I don't want to delve too deeply into the plot as spoilers lurk too close to the surface, but I will say the mystery elements were well managed given that this is an unsolved crime. And while the biggest twist was fairly easy to catch, the text provides enough mini reveals and punches to the gut to keep you invested from start to finish.

And while enough cannot be said about the beauty of the writing, the depictions of abuse in literally every form (child, animal, sexual, physical, drug, etc) are very challenging to read. So please check trigger warnings before diving into this one.

Ultimately, this book has a lot to say and as a vehicle for the voiceless, I think it's important to listen.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. Enjoyed is probably the wrong word considering how tough it was to read at times, considering the subject matter but I really struggled to put this one down. I listened to the audio of this book and the narration was absolutely fantastic. This will be a book I will remember for a long time.

I think part of me not liking the book as much as I wanted to, was the fact that I thought this book would fall into the True Crime/Thriller category, which it does not. I thought the story would revolve around the Chillicothe victims, which it does not. The story is heartbreaking, and I did like the 2 main characters, but please look up trigger warnings before reading. Also, the writing was very lyrical and poetic (which isn't a bad thing), it was almost too preachy.