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.

On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel is a dark yet beautiful story inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six in Ohio. Following twins that were born minutes apart, their story is heavy as they navigate themes of abuse, violence, grief, love, and addiction. Beautiful prose keeps what may be a dark tale from becoming too challenging to read. Highly recommend! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

Set in an Ohio small town and inspired by the real-life unsolved murders of six women known as the Chillicothe Six, On the Savage Side explores how heroin addiction can rip apart a family and a community and how predators are lurking everywhere.
The story follows Arcade and Daffodil (Arc and Daffy), twin sisters who are born to heroin-addicted parents. As their parents struggle with their addiction, life is pretty rough for the family, and when their dad dies from an overdose when the girls are six years old, things go from bad to worse. The one bright spot in their lives is their beloved grandmother, Mamaw Milkweed, who showers the girls with love and affection and teaches them the lesson that life has both a savage side and a beautiful side and that the key to life is to make the savage side beautiful. Mamaw Milkweed uses the underside of a crochet square she is working on to illustrate her point, tidying up the dangling strings to make both sides of the square beautiful. Arc and Daffy take this message to heart, and using their vivid imaginations, they try to find the beautiful side of every savage thing they witness in their young lives.
This was raw, real, and it's def worth the time to read

There are not enough words to truly depict how heavy and amazing this book was. I was lucky enough to read it as a buddy read. So I was able to get through it with help from bookstagram friends. All the stars for this one.

Book review: 'On the Savage Side' an important survival story
Ashley Riggleson Mar 25, 2023

Since I have never read any of Tiffany McDaniel’s novels, I was unsure how I would feel going into her latest book, “On the Savage Side.” Although it was a challenging read, I loved it, and I hope more people read it.

Set in Chillicothe, Ohio, “On the Savage Side” tells the story of twin girls called Arcade and Daffodil. Daffy loves plants and swimming, and Arc loves to dig. She uses the stories of the past to give context and hope to their daily lives. Both girls are vibrant and full of life, but it is also clear from the start that something is not right. They draw pictures on the floor of their home while their mother, who is later revealed to be a drug addict and a sex worker, stays in bed all day. Their only respite is days spent with their grandmother, Mawmaw Milkweed, a woman with a beautiful spirit who teaches the girls how to survive their difficult situation. But when Mawmaw Milkweed is killed in a tragic accident, the fragile happiness the girls have built for themselves shatters. And readers should know that child molestation and neglect are key parts of the plot.

But there is more. Readers also follow Arc and Daffy as adults. They are now drug addicts and sex workers themselves, and the streets are more dangerous than ever. It soon becomes clear that a serial killer is murdering sex workers and dumping their bodies into a nearby river. The girls come across many different dangerous people in the ordinary course of their lives, and McDaniel skillfully points the finger at these different men in turn, which creates an extremely tense plot.

“On the Savage Side” is an important novel that examines how poverty and mental illness can impact generations of people. It is also quite a beautiful book about endurance and survival.

But readers should know going in that it is quite dark. Most dark novels do not bother me, but, despite the many beautiful parts of this text, I found it extremely unsettling. And I have not been able to stop thinking about it since.

On the other hand, this novel is so multilayered that it lends itself to book club discussions, and I am sure that readers will be as riveted as I was.

This review was originally printed in The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, VA.

Arc Dogs and Daphodil are twins subject to a family intrenched in addiction. Addiction takes their father from them and though, their mother and aunt remain, they are taken from the girls too as they continue their struggles with addiction. Mama Milkweed is the only adult in they have who works hard to bring something beautiful to their lives. She raises them on fanciful tales, centering the strength of women, to help the girls paint their difficult lives in magical colors.

I don't know how to talk about The Savage Side without talking about the McDaniel-reading-experience. Anyone who has read Tiffany McDaniel knows you have to be made of strong stuff to make it through any of her novels. I like to think her fan club (which I consider myself a part of) to consist of readers who are just built different. The first thing I thought when I saw this ARC come through was "alright fuck me up McDaniel! I'm ready to hurt again." That isn't normal right?

The Savage Side was exactly what I expected from McDaniel style-wise. Gorgeous writing that brings you in with its sirens call only to drown you when you go get too close. I was nearly drowned more than once before this heartbreaking novel concluded.

In a storyline where women go missing and turn up dead in the river, what I didn't anticipate was the exploration of women losing themselves only to die lost. I couldn't stop thinking about this idea and the way it was woven into this story and so many stories like it. It isn't really a hopeful theme to think on, but it is true to the story of so many women and it connected me deeply with the women who were born lost with no help or resources to find themselves before its too late.

McDaniels has done it again. This review is basically just an open letter to the bold stories this author writes in a no-holds-barred way that refuses to fade to black when things get too bleak.

Thank you ro Netgalley and Knopf publishing for the ARC. On the Savage Side is available now!

I wanted to love this novel. I am a big true crime fan and listen to true crime podcasts daily so a fictionalized novel based on real crimes that took place in Ohio was right up my alley. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into the writing style. It was just too dense for me.

This book left me devastated. Tiffany McDaniel’s writing is truly beautiful and poetic, while the subject matter is deeply tragic. McDaniel’s is quickly becoming my favorite author. I will read every thing she writes! Thank you so much to NetGalley and Knopf publishing for the E-Copy in exchange for my honest review.

When I saw this was “read now” on NetGalley I immediately snatched it up. Betty has been on my TBR for so long I knew I had to give this one a shot. And WOOF. Guys this one is not for the faint of heart.

I loved: Arc as a character and how much she wanted to be better, her and Daffy’s relationship and imagination, how the women were honored thru the book as forces of nature, the attention it brings to the horrible cyclical nature of addiction and the NARRATION 😍 incredible.

What I didn’t love: this book was so long and that honestly was the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars.

If you’re looking for a cute, fun read - this one is not for you. I quite literally felt devastated reading this one but I’m so glad I did.

Heartbreaking, incredible read. Tiffany McDaniels story telling is captivating and a must read for anyone that wants to get sucked into a great book. Highly recommend!

Wow. I'll start by saying that this book has ALL the content warnings. So many. Quite possibly more than any book I've ever read before. It is heavy. It is dark. Just be sure you are in a good headspace before diving into this one, because it's.....a lot.

As a fan of Tiffany McDaniel's previous book, Betty, I was really excited to read On the Savage Side. I actually went into it without any idea of what it would be about, so I truly had no idea what to expect. What I got was a novel about abandonment, neglect, poverty, very heavy drug use and abuse, torture, and death.

This book is extremely heavy and depressing. There are very, very few bright spots, and the few bright spots that are there are purely in the two main characters' memories of the past. Because of the heaviness and the content, I found this book to be a very slow read. I had to take in the content slowly and sit with it. I found myself thinking of the characters even after I would put the book down, my heart just aching for them.

I am not someone that really has "triggers" when reading a book (with the exception of animal abuse), so despite my mention of so many content warnings, they did not present an issue for me in terms of making the book impossible to read or causing anxiety or anything like that. However, it was challenging to read all of the scenes depicting such heavy drug use, as I have a close family member that suffered with drug problems throughout my life. It was interesting because seeing the experience the young women in this book went through, it actually made me grateful that my childhood was nowhere near that bad. It made me really how much worse things could have been without a healthy support system.

Also, if you have ever looked at addicts with disdain, disgust, or just thought poorly of them, this book will likely give you a different perspective. It is heartwrenching and awful to see all the ways people can be led down a path where they become addicted to drugs, and so often it starts from a place of deep hurt, sadness, and struggle.. This book explores all of that as well as how those behaviors can be passed from generation to generation.

The book also explored the way women are viewed and treated and often seen as less than or disposable. It was sickening, and even though it felt so far from the reality I've lived, every word of it rang as true and believeable. It left me feeling so heartbroken for people whose lives go that direction while also so grateful for the live I've had.

Even though this book was so heartbreaking to read and left me feeling down, it was a very well-written book with an important story to tell. If you can handle heavy (and I mean HEAVY) content, then I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and Tiffany McDaniel for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

It is hard to put into words just how deeply this book affected me. This book embodies just how difficult it is to be a woman in the world. The narrator’s voice was so unique that it just pulled me into his world and refused to let me go until I knew how it ended.