📖 On the Savage Side
✍️ Author: Tiffany McDaniel
🎙️ Narrator: Catherine Taber
🏁 Finished: 11/11/26
⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I know the star rating system is arbitrary, and I know this book will absolutely NOT be for everyone, but there is no denying that this is an incredible piece of literature.

What makes this story even more heartbreaking is knowing that, while it’s a work of fiction, it’s loosely inspired by the Chillicothe Six, a series of disappearances and deaths involving women in Ohio around 2014–2015. And that’s what really got to me. Sometimes, when we look back at horrible things throughout history, we try to rationalize them by saying, “It was a different time,” or “People didn’t know better.” But this? This was barely a decade ago.

And when you really think about that, the magnitude of what Arc and Daffy experience throughout this book becomes even more devastating.

This book is uncomfortable, tragic, haunting, and somehow still incredibly beautiful.

The imagination woven throughout the story gives readers these little moments of escape, allowing us to slip away from the ugliness of reality right alongside the twins. I loved that contrast between the brutality of their circumstances and the beauty of the worlds they created in their minds. It’s heartbreaking and magical all at once.

And the emotions?! ALL OF THEM. This book made me feel things I wasn’t prepared to feel. Even without the twist at the end, this would have been an easy 5 stars. But that twist added another layer that almost brought the story back into the realm of fiction for me, if that makes sense. Because for so much of the book, it didn’t feel like I was reading a fictional story. It felt like I was witnessing someone’s lived experience.

I also appreciated the amount of knowledge and history McDaniel incorporated throughout the story. There was so much more here than just the central narrative, and those details made the entire experience feel even richer.

And Catherine Taber’s narration? Absolutely phenomenal. Her performance did this story justice, capturing both the innocence and imagination of the twins and the devastating realities surrounding them. She brought such emotional depth to the characters without making the already heartbreaking moments feel overly dramatized. This is one of those audiobooks where the narration genuinely elevates an already extraordinary story.

I don’t think I’ll be forgetting Arc and Daffy anytime soon. This is a difficult book to read, an even harder one to emotionally process, and one I’m incredibly grateful to have experienced.

An easy 5 stars, even if absolutely nothing about the story itself was easy.