Reviews - Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

730 reviews for:

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

Entertaining. Some of her personal narrative anecdotes didn’t totally fit—but I liked the reporting and sociological data she used to develop the women’s stories. It’s a weirdly structured book—the ‘archetypes’ of victim, detective, killer and defender weren’t really developed as archetypes, they were just individual women’s stories.

katilew42's review against another edition

4.0

Torn on this one…on the one hand, an interesting take on the subject of women and true crime stories, yet on the other, a rather narrow view of obsession.

I think what’s missing for me is an underpinning of how the obsessive translates to the average female viewer/reader/listener. Very few of us actually become obsessed the way the women in the book do. Rather, we absorb the stories because we can control a story that didn’t happen to us. So many awful things do happen in a patriarchal society, and sometimes the fascination with true crime just boils down to the desire to see the shitty man get caught. I can’t do anything about my terrible, handsy boss, but I can watch Dateline and see the jerky, cheating husband arrested and convicted and sent to prison. I can watch Snapped and see women strike back. I can feel a sense of justice.

All that said, this was interesting and well researched. An enjoyable read for true crime fans and fanatics!

suzannetronier's review against another edition

3.0

I was ready for an analysis of true crime and our increasing cultural obsession with it, especially among young and middle aged women and Monroe does offer that, but this theme is overshadowed by stories of fanatics who take the obsession so far as to worship the killers and want to emulate them. That may be some kind of logical extreme, but feels far from the issue of mainstream attraction to it. She does say, right in the title, that this is four stories of women obsessed with crime, so I guess it is my fault as the reader to not pay attention to this. The first story is of a crime scene analyst who helped invent modern forensics and that story was fascinating. The other stories delved deep into particular stories and Monroe does try to suss out what this obsession gave to these women, but I feel like presenting extreme examples enables me to distance myself from them, so that I don't have to examine my attraction to these stories. Monroe does open and close the book with excellent observations on people like me (and indeed the audience for Law & Order: SVU, perhaps the longest running show on network television). In any case, it did cause me to reflect on the place of these dark stories in our culture.

yikes00's review against another edition

3.0

dark informative slow-paced

ashkanee's review against another edition

3.5

dark reflective slow-paced

I wanted to like this book because I like Rachel from her appearance’s on You’re Wrong About, but I found it too slow for me.

ananamauvais's review against another edition

4.0

dark informative reflective medium-paced

samwescott's review against another edition

5.0

I have a lot of reservations about true crime media and its consumption, so this sort of thoughtful meta-commentary was exactly the sort of thing I like best. It’s self-aware and seems genuinely curious about why these sorts of stories are so addictive to our brains and weirdly soothing to our souls. The division into the four archetypal roles of Detective, Victim, Defender, and Killer was a really interesting structural device and really lent itself to the musings about how dwelling in crime and violence tickles our psychology in certain ways. Overall, I found the book to be really engaging and just the right balance of critically analytic and sympathetic.