The Chalk Man is C.J. Tudor’s debut novel. Usually debut novels are like the “test pancake”. You make a small pancake to make sure the griddle is hot enough and then the next pancakes are perfect. Well, not for C.J. Tudor. She starts off with the perfect pancake right off the bat!!
Goodreads summary:
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he’s put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank–until one of them turns up dead. That’s when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
This book had just the right formula of creepy and mystery. It reminded me a little of The Long Walk by Stephen King. It does flash back and forth but the author does a great job with this so you aren’t confused. This is a quick read and is hard to put down. The ending is soooo worth it!!
I would like to thank NetGalley and Crown Publishing group for letting me read an Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review.
BookHermitt 