Super creepy, what a debut!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Blurb:
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy little 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 each other as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing will ever be 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 his other friends got the same messages, 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.
The Review
I was gutted when I couldn't get hold of an advanced copy of this book and because I am watching every penny right now, I put in a request for the library to order it in, rather than buy it myself. (If I went and bought every book I couldn't get a free copy of but just HAD to read, I may no longer have a husband) Hence having to wait two long and agonising months to get my hands on a copy of this.
Ooh, but it was worth the wait. It promised to be creepy, grisly and unsettling and it didn't disappoint on any of those terms.
The book is written from the view point of Eddie and alternates between his present day story and flashbacks to 1986, where he and his friends are so 80's and so kitsch that it reads like a scene from Stranger Things. (Which is more than OK, I love Stranger Things). I was reserving judgement on it as the first chapter or so hadn't really drawn me in. But then the kids go to the fair (and as we all know, creepy things HAVE to happen at a fair) and I was just blindsided when out of nowhere something truly gruesome happens. And from then on, I was sold.
This is incredibly readable. The phrase 'I could not put it down' is clearly too often used in book blogs and I hate to use it here, but then again, I did sit in my car, at the Park and Ride car park, not driving home from work, because I couldn't bear not to read a few more pages. The fact that this is Tudor's debut book is mind boggling.
As in life, nothing is ever 100% perfect and The Chalk Man is no different. There are an awful lot of strands going on, inevitably leaving you going, 'Wait, what?!' on several occasions and skimming backwards to work out what you think you've missed. Trust me, you are going to need to pay attention when reading this one, it won't all be spelled right out there for you, Tudor makes you work a little bit for it. Also, there is one key thing that isn't wrapped up at all (for those that have read it - a key detail of the incident in the Church - why is that not explained at all - am I the only one that found that incredibly annoying?!)
However I will put that all aside for that ending, which I 100% did NOT see coming. It totally creeped me out and then made me question the validity of everything else in the book. This is how psychological thrillers should be done.