I find it most challenging to write the first sentence of a review for a book I adored as much as I loved On the Savage Side. Another reviewer on Goodreads said that Tiffany McDaniel may well be the most gifted storyteller alive today. I can’t shake it. That’s how I feel, too.

With two, and now soon-to-be-three, books published, she has a trademark style of storytelling, one that has me hanging on her every lyrical, descriptive, imaginative word. On top of that, her characterization, the vulnerability and heart in her characters, the creativity in their imaginations, reflective of her own endless creativity; I never want to leave their stories behind, and in the case of On the Savage Side, I dreaded having some idea of their ultimate fates due to what happened to the “Chillicothe Six.”

Inspired by six women in Chillicothe, Ohio, who disappeared around the same time and their cases remained unsolved years later, these women lived and loved in McDaniel’s home state, and the part of Ohio she showcases in her books, an area left behind in some ways.

Arcade (“Arc”) Doggs is the narrator. She begins as far back as her memory takes her, as the twin sister to Daffodil (“Daffy”). Her father is in the military for a time and returns home a different man. He uses drugs to cope, and eventually that use spills over to Addie, the twins’ mom. The girls are young when this happens. Their saving grace is beloved Mamaw Milkweed. She provides a respite from the chaos and is their normal. Time with and lessons learned from her are cherished. Life changes for the twins again when Mamaw is no longer part of their lives.

Time and tragedy chip away at Arc and Daffy’s dreams. Their armor slowly falls away, as they aren’t protected from the ugliness and dark underbelly, until eventually they find themselves on the same path as their mom and Aunt Clover. With drugs they lose their hopes but never their friendships and closeness with each other. During this time they become friends with other women in the community who use drugs to dull life’s immense hardships. As with their mom and aunt, they also turn to sex work to keep money in their pockets and to buy more drugs.

The women are hopeful as they try to get clean, but they return to the same environment and stressors, and life has a way of resetting back to what it knows. One by one, the women disappear and are found in the river. Arc narrates until the very end. Even though I knew the direction the book would take, I never lost hope that someone would escape to a better life, one would overcome addiction, no matter how steep the mountain was to climb. McDaniel goes deep into the darkest, most painful places, but she always leaves some hope to hang onto in the goodness of the hearts of her fallible characters.

The way the story gets its name is derived by a lesson taught by Mamaw Milkweed. That gem is literally threaded throughout the book in a subtle way, and while I have to mention it, I will not spoil it for the reader.

On the Savage Side is a marketed as a literary thriller, and I agree with that classification, though thriller fans should be prepared for the finest, deep dive characterization there is, which keeps the story at a deliciously even pace. There’s an unease from the very first page, and there are twists I did not foresee, including the final twist. I don’t think the twists are in the front seat of the story; the characters, their friendships, and life struggles are.

As with all of McDaniel’s books, I hang on every word. I read, re-read, reflect, ponder, and more than anything I feel. The Chillicothe Six deserved a voice. All women who were once little girls with hopes, dreams, aspirations, and open hearts, who were sisters, mothers, and daughters, deserve a voice, to know love and be loved, and to find justice when a life is taken.

I received a gifted copy of this book; however, I also have it on preorder. Preordering books by our favorite authors is one of the best ways we can support them, and with more than twenty books in her arsenal, and only three published, I want to hear from Tiffany McDaniel again and again for a lifetime.

We follow Arcade, who, along with her twin sister Daffodil, grow up in Chillicothe, Ohio. They grow up in the shadow of their grandmother, mother, and aunt who influence them greatly in both positive and negative ways.

As they grow up, their friends and other women in their town start to turn up drowned in the river.

This book was beautiful, devastating, and harrowing. I loved reading about the relationship between the Chillicothe Queens and how they looked out for and cared for one another. The story draws from the true story of the unsolved murder and disappearance of the Chillicothe Six, women who disappeared or turned up dead similarly to those in the novel, and were dismissed because of preconceived notions about the "type' of women they were.

Betty is one of my favorite books, so I was extremely excited to read this. I think Betty still edges it out a bit for me, but I can't wait to see what's next for McDaniel.

Thank you to Netgalley for the Advanced Readers Copy of On The Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel. While it was slow to start, it had a solid pacing and story for the latter half.

A sincere thank you to KVPA and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Daffy and Arc are twin sisters born a minute apart. They're highly imaginative and are able to turn their squalid, savage surroundings, living with essentially absent, addiction-ravaged parents, into something beautiful. The novel takes readers back and forth from Daffy and Arc's brutal childhood to the present, where young women, including their friends, are starting to disappear, only to be found murdered in the nearby river. Based on the true stories of the six missing women in Chillicothe, Ohio, this novel is a raw, emotional tribute to missing women everywhere.

This book was DIFFICULT to read, in the best way. It's an important story, a story that's true for many families and friend circles, towns, and communities. It explores the savagery of addiction and how it can completely consume a person's life, relationships, and mind. It explores the terrifying things that children and adults endure in times of desperation and poverty. It explores the general air of apathy that surrounds the disappearances and murders of "junkies," "druggies." and "whores" who are considered as little else. It explores the effects of the ghosts and demons that we carry with us for years and decades. The writing was beautiful - hauntingly so. McDaniel's talent for such raw, emotional writing is indescribable. Like I said, this is a very difficult novel to read, but it's a story that needs to be told.

Please check content warnings before reading this book, as it contains significant depictions of drug use and abuse, rape, sexual assault, animal cruelty, murder, and miscarriage.

This was really good. Considering the research the author did for this story It did not disappoint. Started a little slow but picked up at 50 percent.

Everything that Tiffany McDaniel writes is profound. I can’t say enough about this book. This story pulls on the reader’s heartstrings and gives life to women who were easily written off by society. It is what I’d call “Great Lakes Grit” at its finest. Arc and Daffy and their friends are characters that will be etched into my bones for years to come. I cannot wait to see what this author writes next, and have no doubt it will be amazing. All the stars!

After loving Betty and letting it absolutely destroy me last year, I knew that I needed to get my hands on this one. Tiffany McDaniel's writing is one of a kind and makes someone like me who normally struggles with books longer than 300 pages absolutely DEVOUR this 450+ page book in a matter of days. Tiffany used inspiration from the Chillicothe six from her home town to tell this powerful story of two twin sisters who have been surrounded by suspicious murders and believe they are next. This book was incredibly raw, and heartbreaking, and so entertaining! I could not put it down.

🦋 ON THE SAVAGE SIDE 👩🏻‍🦰

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (4.5/5)

Synopsis: Twin sisters Arcade and Daffodil create an imaginary world as they grow up to distract themselves from the violence, poverty, and drug epidemic that envelops Chillicothe, Ohio. As young adults, they do all that they can to survive as they spiral into a heroin addiction and their friends turn up dead in the river one by one. Inspired by the real unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six.

Review: There’s a harsh dichotomy between McDaniel’s wise, lyrical prose and the gruesome violence the characters experience on a daily basis, but I think it works to tell this story. The author weaves threads of magic and folklore throughout the novel to the point where you question what’s real and what’s imagined. The mother-daughter relationship is gritty and sad and I haven’t seen such a honest reckoning with that since the film Moonlight. The river is essentially a character in the book. Mamaw Milkweed is the only responsible, loving adult in the book and I wish there was more of her in it.

On the Savage Side was released 2/14 and is available everywhere. Many thanks to @netgalley and @aaknopf for allowing me to read a digital copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions in this review are my own.

CW: murder, death, grief, drug abuse/addiction, recovery/rehab, graphic physical and sexual violence, prostitution/sex trafficking

I’ve been excited to read ON THE SAVAGE SIDE from the very early days of finding out that Tiffany McDaniel was coming out with a new book: I absolutely loved and devoured Betty, and fell in love with the author’s heartbreaking story and beautiful writing.

With this book, I was only aware of the story being based on the true crime murders of the Chillicothe Six, but thought this was a great take on it!

*many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

This was amazing. Heartbreaking. Beautifully written. A step beyond Betty, my favorite of Tiffany McDaniel's so far. This has cemented her as one of my favorite authors of all time.

Arcade and Daffodil (Arc and Daffy) are twins, born to addict parents, living in poverty and hearing stories and tales from their Mamaw Milkweed. Life was hard and its no wonder that they ended up being ensnared by the heroin addictive lifestyle they shared with their aunt and mother. This book was extremely difficult to read and is even harder to review. It was beautifully written by Tiffany McDaniels but the content was so sad and horrifying, especially the ending. I felt horrible for Arc and Daffy and the life they lived. I believe this is being categorized as a thriller but I didn’t find it to be at all so that may be a little off putting for some but I wouldn’t go off that. If you like well written, sad books this is for you! 😂I’m rounding up to 4 ⭐️. Thank you NetGalley and Knopf publishing for an arc copy of this book.

This book is haunting and beautifully written. The ending brought me to tears. The author writes about the Chillicothe six in the beginning and then takes us into the lives of six fictional characters living in Chillicothe being targeted by a serial killer. We get to know each women and their lives in and out of active addiction. Humanizes them rather than just labeling them as addicts. Both the savage side and the bright side of them all. An amazing read!

Un altro doloroso capolavoro dell'autrice di The summer that melted everything, che precisa come un bisturi disseziona il dolore e la crudeltà che si nascondono dietro i singoli individui, la famiglia e la società che ingloba tutto.
Leggerla è un atto necessario, come pulire una ferita che non si sapeva di avere.

This book just wasn’t for me. I thought it was going to be one thing going in and I wasn’t a fan of where it went. I didn’t like the writing and didn’t connect with the characters at all.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review.

This is the first book I have read by Tiffany McDaniel. I am usually not a fan of flowery writing, but the connection to real life events made this work for me. Even though the writing is disturbing at times, I found that I kept wanting to keep reading. I do recommend this book, but it is a very sad and heartbreaking story.

Thank you to netgalley for allowing me to review this book.

This book was quite something in the way the author showed how your background can be such a strong determinant of your life. For the twin girls, Arcade and Daffodil, their life seemed doomed to fail, but as always, the girls held out hope for the future. They lived for awhile with their grandmother who nurtured them with stories and love, but ten their drug addicted prostitute mother and aunt wanted them back.

The girls were subjected to the drugs, the Johns, and most of all to the poverty of being in a family of chaos. They do invent stories, imaginary places to escape to but life doesn't get any better. They became what they most desired not to be.

I don't think I have ever read are more depressing story and although it sounds nightmarish, the author loosely based her story on events which happened in a small Ohio town.

The Chillicothe Six, were disposable women, and just like to women in this tragic story, they lost their lives. I had to wonder what these girls would have become if born in a different environment or at least to someone who cared.

It's chilling tale, one which Tiffany McDaniel does great justice to with her many punches to one's gut.

Thank you to Tiffany McDaniel, Knopf Publishing, and NetGalley for a copy of this hard hitting story which published in February of this year.

After the popularity of Betty I knew I wanted to pick up this new release from Tiffany McDaniel and boy does she deliver. As expected, On the Savage Side is beautiful and painfully relatable. I can't wait to read what she does next.

I had high hopes for this one. And I bloody loved it. McDaniel may not write stories to everyone’s taste as they tend to gravitate towards severe hardships and trauma but she is one hell of a writer.

Once again, a book featuring sisters that I adored. Arc and Daffy are twin sisters and live in Chillicothe, Ohio with their mother and aunt who are both drug addicts. I loved Arc so much 💔

The narrative is brilliantly done and interspersed with a medical report every time a victim is found in the river. Despite this being fictional, McDaniel dedicated this book to “the Chillicothe Six”, the six women who disappeared or were murdered between May 2014 and May 2015 in this small rural town.

It also has some fascinating facts which I ended up googling and I would recommend you read the transcripts that I accessed on the NPR website about Hitler’s addiction to drugs. I was also recommended the non-fiction read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe which I heard was brilliant and has been added to my list.

Back to the savage side, it’s not an uplifting read, but rather a stark glimpse of what drug addiction and being born in a drug addicts‘ household looks like. And it’s not pretty…

But what a read!
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thank you to @aaknopf for the gifted book! It is out February 14th. It took me about 150 pages to really get invested but once I got to that point, I read the rest of it much quicker and ultimately loved it! This book is a brutal look at drug addiction, prostitution, and murder in a rural community. This is not a traditional “who-done-it” type mystery, but if you go into this expecting a more literary story, this should be a great read.

This story is narrated by Arc. She lives in Chillicothe, Ohio and has a twin sister called Daffy. She grows up with a mom and aunt who are addicted to heroin and a dad who dies when she’s young. Her grandma, Mamaw Milkweed, helped raise Arc and Daffy until she is lost to an accident. During the book, we span into the twins’ young adulthood, as they fall into the cycle of drug use, like their parents. It shows the difficult realities of how hard it is to recover from addiction.

This book is a look at crime and how society tends to care less about those involved in things like sex work and drug use, even though these people are loved too and matter to people. During this book, Arc finds a body of a woman in the river. Several other bodies are found there as well, coming from the group of women that she is friends with. While these crimes are reported, the local law enforcement doesn’t do much to investigate them and it’s clear that their attitude is that these women were hurting themselves anyway through their drug use so they probably died from something related to that. And even if there was foul play, they still don’t care because they were “just another addict.”

My only quibble is that I wanted closure about the killer. That’s definitely a personal thing, though, and I understand that a large part of the point of the book is that these crimes often do go unsolved due to the lack of caring about the victims so the ending makes sense when thinking about that.

I definitely recommend this book! If you’ve read it, let me know your thoughts! I struggled with Betty and never finished it, but this is making me want to revisit it.

Words to describe this book: haunting, brutal, emotionally draining, gut-wrenching, gripping, beautiful and moving.

Please be aware of the trigger warnings (such as rape, torture, sexual abuse, substance abuse, and child neglect) before reading this book.