 Welcome to Church of the Chair where we don't skinny dip, we chunky dunk. I'm your host E, and today we're going down by the river. Today we're going to be reviewing On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel. This was one of my most anticipated reads this year, and it did not disappoint. I previously read The Summer That Melted Everything and Betty by the same author. Tiffany McDaniel can write her ass off. What's going on with my shirt? Anyways, on with the review. Before we get started I have an experiment that I want to try. This next part there will be no cuts because I don't want it to seem like I'm cheating, but anyone who knows me knows my memory is absolutely terrible. It's one of the reasons why I'm doing these videos like I'm doing them now with all of the cuts because I can only remember so much at a time and the older I get the worse it gets. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to list off all the characters that I can remember from this book. Starting off with Addy or Adolin. That is the main characters that's their mother. You have Aunt Clover, and then you have the main characters themselves which are Ark and Daffy Dogs, D-O-G-G-S. Then you have their friends, Sage Nell, Thursday, Indigo, Violet. Then you have the men. Now in this book there are no good characters. There are no heroes, but the men are especially vile. And don't give me that. Not all men. Don't give me that. You have the spider which goes by no other name. When you read the book you'll understand why. You have the highway man. You have the river man who is the, that's the nickname, the river man is the nickname for the serial killer that's running around. We'll get to more of that in a minute. Then you have Welt and then you have John Teresa. You have the girl's grandmother which is Mama Milkweed. Then one of the girlfriends of the main characters she has a child named Gracie. These characters live rent free in my head. Every single one of them have their own trials and tribulations, their own wants, their own needs, their own failures, their own successes. It is amazing how much depth of character for that amount of a cast because every single one of those characters are perfectly, perfectly drawn out. And I commend the author for managing to pull that off. Next up I want to talk about some trigger warnings, especially for myself. I had a very difficult time reading this book. It took me three, four months to finally finish it. I'm not sure exactly how long I actually read it for when I started it, but when I started I had to keep putting it down because if you don't know I have a history of drug addiction. I was on heroin from 97 to 2001 and this book is all about these characters struggling with heroin addiction. It was very well done, very accurate, but I had to keep putting it down because every time it was brought up it was so well done that I got the itch, the taste, I needed a fix, so I had to step away from the book. The next trigger I'll mention is there is graphic sexual violence of this book and especially there is a scene with a nine or 10 year old girl being violently assaulted and I need you guys to be aware of that in case you have those triggers. Now while all of this is horrible, the way Tiffany McDaniel writes is first very readable. It's very easy to get sucked into her world. Also her language is always beautiful. Her prose is elegant and pristine and I loved reading the book even if I didn't like the experiences that I watched unfold within the story. This next piece is a criticism but only based on my own bias here. It's going to sound funny to a lot of you but this book for me is too plot heavy. The summer that melted everything and Betty McDaniel's previous two books didn't have much of a plot whatsoever. It was more a stringing together of slice of life stories involving the characters in those books. In this one while the serial killer plot is a sub plot and the characters are forward while the plot is behind them. I still felt like it was too much and I know that's an odd complaint but I would rather have just had this story without the constant wanting to find out who the killer was and knowing that hopefully Tiffany McDaniel did not fictionalize a killer's identity. If you don't know this book is based on the Chalacate Queens or the Chalacate Six, a group of six women who were brutally murdered and left in the river in Chalacate, Ohio. All too often when true crime stories are fictionalized especially to the extent that this one was fictionalized you find the author going for broke and making their own assumption of who the killer was and their identity. This might be a spoiler to some but the identity of the killer is as in real life never discovered and I appreciate that. I do not think that it is right to fictionalize a tragedy and then change the narrative or the ending as it were even though this cold case is still ongoing. The last thing I want to point out here is my favorite part of the book. It's a very small piece but that's usually what I latch onto when I read books like this. Cleopatra's Time Machine is an old broken down car that the girls find by the river which is their hangout spot where they go to shoot heroin or you put on their crowns as they call it and toward the end there's a scene with Daffy talking about the car, about Cleopatra's Time Machine and how it runs on water. It is one of the most beautiful passages I have ever read in my life and I commend the author for accomplishing what she did with that scene. It felt like everything came full circle and the word play of arc one of the characters name is arcade dogs but her sister Daffy calls her arc and changing that one letter at the end it when you read it you'll understand what I'm talking about it I was in tears for a while just just thinking about that so yeah I applaud you Tiffany McDaniel that was fantastically done. Now this next bit is not a criticism it is just me admitting something I have a touch of the tism if you know what that means you know what that means I saw the twist there's only really one twist in this book I saw the twist coming very early on probably about the time that the first body pops up and I was like yep that's and it has nothing to do with who the killer is like I said that's left to your own imagination the cold case is left cold but I I saw the twist coming I don't know how or why because it's done so well in the book that it should have you know flown under the radar but with me I have a problem with anything that's like thrillers or suspense novels I can usually tell what's coming based on how well the author builds it up in the beginning and I thought it was I thought it was pretty obvious especially when Addy starts talking about a certain character being sick but that's all the time I have for you today if you have read On the Savage Side by Tiffany McDaniel or you've read her other two books The Summer That Melted Everything and Betty if you have not read Betty what are you doing with your life if you have read any of those books and would like to tell me what you think please do down there in the comments but until next time