A review by beckyyreadss
The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

 Thank you, Michael Joseph Penguin Publishing, for sending this book in a welcome pack in exchange for an honest review. 

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of becoming teens. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any 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 of a child, and nothing is ever the same. 30 years later, 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 runs out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank – until one of them dies. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago. 

I really enjoyed this book – it was messy and weird, but I feel like it was the writing style. It was bizarre but it worked by the end. At the beginning, my head was completely battered. I was so confused and it sort of had to go round the bend and back again but at the end I understood the plot. Eddie is a messed-up kid and really should have gone to therapy when he was younger because the actions he took as a child and an adult were weird and messed-up. Like all those children involved are messed up and desperately need therapy. It sorts of shows that everyone is always hiding something.  

If you really want to read a messed-up book that will screw with your mind, this book is for you.   
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