Savage Appetites Audiobook By Rachel Monroe cover art

Savage Appetites

Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession

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Savage Appetites

By: Rachel Monroe
Narrated by: Jayme Mattler
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Buy for $18.74

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A “necessary and brilliant” (NPR) exploration of our cultural fascination with true crime told through four “enthralling” (The New York Times Book Review) narratives of obsession.

In Savage Appetites,Rachel Monroe links four criminal roles—Detective, Victim, Defender, and Killer—to four true stories about women driven by obsession. From a frustrated and brilliant heiress crafting crime-scene dollhouses to a young woman who became part of a Manson victim’s family, from a landscape architect in love with a convicted murderer to a Columbine fangirl who planned her own mass shooting, these women are alternately mesmerizing, horrifying, and sympathetic. A revealing study of women’s complicated relationship with true crime and the fear and desire it can inspire, together these stories provide a window into why many women are drawn to crime narratives—even as they also recoil from them.

Monroe uses these four cases to trace the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. Combining personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the 20th and 21st centuries, Savage Appetites is a “corrective to the genre it interrogates” (The New Statesman), scrupulously exploring empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of crime. Social Sciences True Crime Criminology Murder Crime Biographies & Memoirs

Editor's Pick

So that’s why I’m like this…
"I’ve been fascinated by true tales of the dark & macabre variety for as long as I can remember, but I have to admit, there are times when I didn’t feel particularly good about sharing that fact. Outwardly, I think I’m a pretty cheery person (fellow Editors, don’t @ me), so what draws me and so, so many other women into such dark stories? Enter Rachel Monroe, who had the very same question about herself. She presents four fascinating, sometimes deeply disturbing, tales of four women who also devoted their lives to crime in very different ways: from the famed forensic miniaturist Frances Lee Glessner to the landscaper who fell in love with an incarcerated man on Death Row. Intertwining these tales with her own observations and experiences, she offers intriguing, if not perfectly comprehensive (because what’s life without a little mystery?) theories about what makes true crime just to irresistible. I saw a lot of myself in this listen, for better or for worse, and Jayme Mattler’s narration is lively and familiar—like listening to a good friend gush about the current case they can’t get off their mind."
—Sam D., Audible Editor

Well-researched Stories • Thought-provoking Content • Perfect Narration • Engaging Crime Analysis • Fitting Voice

Highly rated for:

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I was really disappointed that this book has little substance and a lot of filler. I thought the information of the Nutshell Miniatures was the only interesting part of the book. The profiles of the other women just seemed superficial.

Rambling and Repetitive

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The book starts off strong but it seemed as if she should have developed her ideas more before publishing. I almost felt as if this was more of an excellent draft than a complete piece. It ends on a very unsatisfying note, as well. It seems like a hastily wrapped up ending.

SPOILER ALERT: The main problem with this book is that she spend way too little time going into the psychological dynamics at work when discussing how these women are identifying / relating to true crime. The story that she does this the best is the last one but the point that could be made with that case is marred by her overlong attention to the details in the letters between her and her accomplice (you don’t even find out what she thought after her boyfriend killed himself and their plot was stopped).

Another weak point: the author spends large sections of the book including things that, though very interesting, are never quite related back towards the main points of the chapter.

She introduces an excellent point, such as women getting into true crime so they feel they can be in control of frightening feelings of victim-hood...but then doesn’t really explore that in detail. She talks about women identifying with violent men as a way to work out their own vengeful feeling via proxy...but then doesn’t really develop that enough either.
Also, the “experiment” she talks about in the end sounds like bullshit. If anything, I would expect the women to try something in which they turn the tables. Otherwise, it sounds like taking a self-defense class in which you only get the crap kicked out of you but never learn how to defend yourself.

I wanted her to spend a little more time equating what the (mostly) white, middle-class and above young men from “good” families with women who also came from a similar background have in common. All of these women have something in common with their male counterparts.



A bit disappointed..

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This book deeply engages with something we think about too much and not enough. These stories permeate our culture and we don’t interrogate what that means and what impact it has in the way we should. I was worried it would be sensational or glamorize interest in violence. It isn’t and it doesn’t.

Thoughtful

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I really enjoyed this. The readers voice fit perfectly with the story and was never distracting (this is often a turn off for me). I appreciated the self aware approach to the true crime phenomenon without condescension.
Rachel Monroe did such an incredible job researching these characters. People I was previously familiar with took on so much more depth and dimension. Well done!

Excellent for the true crime obsessed

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I thought that this book was going to be more about the obsession of true crime with some people. In a sense, it is, but not really. It’s more like 4(?) different stories that talks about certain cases that an individual was involved with. If that’s what you were expecting, you might enjoy this book. I was looking for a more broad, researched book about the underlying reason why people were obsessed with true crime.

Not what I expected

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