I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Thanks NetGalley!

I'm a huge fan of true crime stories in general, so I had a feeling I'd enjoy this book too.

just read it.

I feel like i've been waiting so long for a book which talks about how people, particularly women can have a real, genuine interest in true crime, serial killers and murder without it being wrong or unnatural. I've always been fascinated by the psychology behind it and Rachel Monroe's book looks at that objectively and without thinking that women who do have an interest in this will go on to become crazed serial killer fans writing to killers in jail. Monroe picked fascinating women to look at and i especially enjoyed the section on Frances Glessner Lee. I recommend this book to all true crime fans.

Frances Glessner Lee, Lisa Statman, Lorri Davis, Lindsay Souvannarath, what do these women have in common?
Frances also known as the "mother of forensics" came up with an ingenious way of helping to solve crimes. She made miniature "doll houses" with incredibly accurate detail
of the crime to help officers resolve the crime.
Lisa sided with the Tate family. In this way she was able to advocate for "blameless" victims.
Lorri Davis fell in love with a murderer and became involved with proving his innocence.
Lindsay hopes to be able to voice her superiority by committing mass
murder.
Each women was involved in something to do with crime. Whether helping to solve crime, being the criminal, marrying a criminal or advocating for the victims.
Interesting, intriguing.
Great read!

Perfect for readers fascinated by true crime each chapter a different true story. Each peculiarly weird tale.A woman obsessed with Sharon Tate’s family involving herself with them living in the guest house of the home where Sharon was murdered.This is a book where you will shake your head at these women’s behavior but won’t be able to stop turning the pages, #netgalley#scribner

Savage Appetites reminds me of a university research thesis. That being said there are some fascinating parts to this and some really flat parts to the book. There are some true stories mixed with the authors opinions.

This book is an examination of the fascination many women have for crime and forensic events, books, and other media, It is a proven fact that the majority of true crime aficionados are women, and interest keeps growing. Munroe examines a 1940’s crime scene recreation, a woman who lived in the Sharon Tate death house, and others like herself that are obsessed by the exploration and sharing of these types of places and occurrences.

Savage Appetites takes a closer and non-dismissive look at women’s fascination (and obsession) with true crime and urges readers with these morbid interests to be “more honest about our appetites—and curious about them, too.” It explores the different ways in which very different women involved themselves with murderers and those associated with them. I was especially interested in the first section on Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies and in the last section on the deep dark places of social media, mostly Tumblr, and the creepy fandoms that exist there. My only complaint about the book was that the author tended to insert her political opinions or comments about racism where they weren’t really relevant.

I wanted to like SAVAGE APPETITES more than I did. The initial research question of the book is interesting (although it says something that I saw a “research question” in a book that’s supposed to be about true crime and obsession - it was often written more like a persuasive essay than a thrilling narrative). The author wonders: Why are women so disproportionately interested in true crime? What is the motivation for women to flock to stories of violent murder, rape, burglary, kidnapping, etc. when so many of the perpetrators and victims are often men? This is something that many true crime fans (especially women) know to be anecdotally true, but hasn’t been studied or written about in detail.

But this book isn’t meant to be a research paper - it is itself meant to be a sort of true-crime book about the true-crime obsessed. The author chooses stories from her research of four women who took the garden-variety obsession with crime and death to another level in different ways.

This book is a strange mix of a lot of different things: the author’s memoir and personal stories, narratives of the four women she covers, and sociology and history. This is not to say mixed-genre books don’t work - I just don’t think they worked in this book. It’s like it couldn’t decide what to be; instead serving various courses with various tones in short bursts that don’t quite flow together. For example, the chapter on Alisa Statman’s obsession with the Tate-La Bianca (Manson Family) murders hops from the story of Alisa and co-conspirator Bill Nelson to a girl from the author’s hometown who went missing to a woman who harassed Sharon Tate’s parents by saying she was Sharon Tate’s unborn daughter to the victim’s rights movement spurred by a counseling group that the Tate parents joined to the psychology of violent trauma and loss to Patti Tate’s life story. Sounds like a lot, right?

This book gets progressively better as it goes on. I wasn’t all that interested in the Frances Glessner Lee chapter - as a fan of true crime myself, I felt that the story of Glessner Lee and her “dollhouses of death” (Nutshell Studies, as she dubs them) have been told and retold - and after reading the other three chapters, I don’t think that Glessner Lee’s story fits with the rest of them. The story of Alisa Statman was weird but nothing to write home about. The third chapter, about Lorri Davis and her correspondence/romance with Damien Echols (of the West Memphis Three/HBO documentary Paradise Lost) was good - a little creepy and weird but fascinating to read about Davis’s obsession and advocacy. The last chapter was by far the best, most disturbing, and most relevant to our modern lives - about Lindsay Souvannarath and her sick Internet boyfriend James ensconced in the internet culture of “Columbiners”: teenage girls’ (and sometimes boys’) fangirling obsession with the school shooters Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Whoa. That story was seriously messed up and totally worth reading to understand the very real threat of young people whose minds become infected with the kind of poison that leads them to mass shootings.

When I picked up this book I was so excited. A new and novel idea on how women get caught up in crime. The opening chapter hooked me in with her description of Crime Con. Oh my goodness, I had no idea into this sub culture in crime. And a small part, lets be honest a LARGE part of me wants to go to Crime Con.
The book is basically 4 chapters. Each chapter focuses on one female who was involved in crime.
I loved the chapter on the Nutshell lady. I was fascinated by what a white rich lady could accomplish with money and time.
The next chapter, I was confused as to why the lady was included and what it was leading up to. I am going to assume that the author included this chapter to show that some people will insert themselves into the lives of victims of crimes.
That was not my takeaway from the chapter since the lady in question took care of the kids, etc.
To me, it was an odd chapter.
Third chapter was about the wife a West Memphis Three prisoner. A great chapter.
Fourth Chapter was another befuddled confusion that came together at the end.

Overall the book was a great concept that the author still needed to refine. I also felt that the author needed to NOT keep inserting her feelings throughout the chapters.

I received an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review

This is a mildly entertaining book about some seriously fucked up people, author included, but to be real, if you picked up this book, you’ve obviously got a few chips short of a cookie yourself. A bizarrely enjoyable cluster of pages about a diverse group of broads who are obsessed with death. Either you want to read that or you don’t. You know who you are.