This was the first novel I read after Christmas, and it was the perfect moody read for a chilly winter day. I loved the scenes with young Eddie and his friends using their chalk man code, and their reactions to the initial discovery of the dead body, but the mystery that adult Eddie and his now-grown friends had to solve kept me absorbed – and even guessing – to the end of the story.

What I really appreciated in Tudor’s writing was the way she lulls readers into the every-day life of a sleepy town before throwing in a suspenseful twist. Her voice, at least in this novel, is quietly engaging, and I would have been equally happy if she’d written something that was a family drama, but I’m glad she used it for suspense. I like the way she underplayed so much of the dark parts of the story. I’m looking forward to more from Tudor, hopefully very soon.

The Chalk Man is a satisfying read with a plot that keeps you just uncertain enough of the eventual outcome that you keep reading.

Goes well with: carnival food – a hot dog on a stick or a hot pretzel with mustard, and root beer.

Its 1984 and boys are spending days riding their bikes around town. Sounds innocent, but there is underlying evil.
Excellent, compelling read that will keep you up reading late into the night.

I really wanted to love this book, but I think it had so much hype, that it could never live up to it. I did really like it a lot though. I do not want to give the story away so will be brief in my description. The Chalk Man is told in two different time periods, one in 1986 and the other in 2016. The story opens with the death and dismemberment of a young girl. This shapes the characters in the story. Eddie is the narrator and the story is told based on what happened to him in 1986. The group of friends consists of four boys and one girl. When Gavin received a pail of chalk for his 12th birthday, the kids begin to secretly communicate with one another using stick figures drawn in chalk of various colors to know who the message is from. But someone is using white chalk and that is not a colour any of the kids used.. I really enjoyed seeing these kids grow up and become adults. They all changed based on their circumstances, but when needed, they are still there for each other. One of the other storylines deals with an abortion clinic in town (remember this is 1986) and how the townspeople react to it. There is also some situations with bullying and a teacher who has albinism and how the kids react behind his back. As the story progressed, I began to figure out who the murderer was and I was correct, but the actual unveiling was a bit scary. If you like a good thriller/suspense you will enjoy this book.

This debut novel took me by surprise. I didn't know what to think going in. The title leads you to believe it is a 'serial killer' novel (it is NOT), and my fellow book bloggers seemed to either love it or... it left them apathetic.

Well folks, I'm one of those that LOVED it. I enjoyed the characters, the setting, the story, and, most of all, the writing. When you find yourself highlighting a lot, and reading aloud to your (uninterested) husband, then for me the writing struck a chord. Sentences like: "...my laughter lines lost their sense of humour some time ago."

The characters: We meet a rag-tag group of twelve year-olds. Misfits all, they reminded me a bit of the group on the television show "Stranger things". Four boys and one girl. The novel is told from the point of view of one of the boys, Eddie Addams. Eddie is the son of a doctor (who works at an abortion clinic) and a stay-at-home, writer father (who his friends call a hippie).

Eddies group of friends include Fat Gav (Gavin, the son of the local publican), Hoppo (David Hopkins, the son of a single mother who cleans for a living), Metal Mickey (Mickey Cooper, so named for his mouth full of braces - a boy who was creative, usually with the truth), and Nicky (Nicola Martin, the daughter of the local vicar - who seemed to have more bruises than rough play would account for).

From the beginning, the reader realizes that Eddie is 'different'. For one thing, we know he is a collector. He collects all manner of things, and sometimes the things are in other people's houses, and they don't know he has been there. He doesn't do it to 'steal' valuable things, he just collects. Perhaps a pen or some other insignificant thing that they won't miss.

The summer that the gang were twelve-years old was a pivotal one for them all.

That summer a new teacher came to town. His name is Mr. Halloran, and he has the distinction of being an albino. The kids call him "The Chalk Man" because of his white hair and colouring.

That summer Fat Gav had a birthday party. One of his gifts was a bucket of colored chalks. This gift begins the gangs practice of leaving coded messages for each other.

That same summer the gang goes to a local fair. Whilst there, there is a tragic accident with the 'Waltzer' that leaves a beautiful young girl disfigured and makes a huge impact on Eddie's life.

"Kids have secrets, too. More so than adults, sometimes."

That summer Eddie also suffers a traumatic event in the playground where he was at the mercy of the local bully. Mr. Halloran, the new teacher, comes to his aid.

AND, most importantly, that summer the four boys find a dismembered body in the woods.

The setting: Anderbury, a small Hampshire town with cobbled streets, shady parks, and a 'semi-famous' cathedral. The town is located very close to the forest.

Then, the reader skips forward thirty years. Eddie is now a teacher himself. A loner who drinks too much. He lives in his childhood home with a lodger. His lodger, Chloe, is much younger than him. Attractive and eccentric, she brings some much needed colour to Eddie's life. Oh... and Eddie still has two rooms upstairs that are devoted to his 'collections'.

"Principles are nice things. If you can afford them. I like to think I am a principled man, but then, most men do. The fact is, we all have a price, we all have buttons that can be pressed to make us do things that are not entirely honourable."

Eddie is paranoid about getting Alzheimer's disease. When Eddie was just a teenager, his Dad had the dreaded disease and Eddie is terrified he will get it too.

"Friends, you can cut loose. Family, you never lose. They're always there, in the background, screwing with your mind."

Fat Gav is still in town. He now runs the pub like his father did before him. Only Fat Gav runs it sitting in a wheelchair. Hoppo is still in town, living in his childhood home, looking after his mother who now suffers from dementia. Metal Mickey is long gone from town, as is Nicky.

"What shapes us is not always our achievements but our omissions. Not lies; simply the truths we don't tell."

Then... Eddie gets a letter with a stick figure with a noose around its neck... and a single piece of white chalk.

"We think we want answers. But what we really want are the right answers. Human nature. We ask questions that we hope will give us the truth we want to hear."

I can honestly say that I enjoyed all aspects of this novel and look forward to anything else C.J. Tudor will produce. I recommend this book to all who enjoy unreliable narrators, eerie messages, and... secrets.

I think I wanted to like this book more than I actually did due to the fact that I had heard so many intriguing things about it. This is a solid first go from CJ Tudor and it was a fun, light read for me but not so much of a thriller like the pre-release reviews would have us believe.



The good. Tudor did a good job with the back and forth timeline of the novel. It is hard to get that right but, with a few exceptions of where the linearity got a little muddy, she did well transporting us from 1986 to 2016 and back again. The world building was lovely and believable especially the fair (some imagery that I won't forget there), and the woods.



The not so good. The characters reminded me of other novels and movies almost exactly. Not to draw to fine a line, but I pictured the characters of Fat Gav and Nicky as Dustin and Max from Stranger Things. There seemed to be quite a few loose ends that were left unexplained and, in the end, I saw the identity of the real murderer coming from the halfway point.



All in all, if you are a fan of murder mystery novels, please pick up this debut offering from CJ Tudor. I have a feeling this summer is going to be a great time for this book and I wish her so much luck.



Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher and author for allowing me an advanced look at this novel in exchange for an honest review.

I received this advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I could not put this book down! This book grabs you from the very disturbing beginning and has you begging to know more. You follow a group of friends who endure a horrific event in their childhood and witness how it affects them in adulthood. This debut is chalked-full (pun intended) of the choices we make and the consequences that follow. There are several twists throughout that build to one very chilling ending. As I was reading I was on the fence between a four or five star rating but the ending was extremely satisfying. I really enjoyed the pace and writing style of this new author and I look forward to future works.

Wow! From beginning to end the reader is kept in suspense! You won't want to put this book down! Starting with the death of a young girl, the whole town is part of the mystery. I bet you won't see the end coming!

Fabulous book. Thoroughly loved. Highly recommend!

Wasn’t sure what to expect from this new author. Pleasantly surprised, good character analysis, and suspense. Gory in some areas so read those parts fast. A wonderful debut from a talented writer.

It was summer in England and a group of twelve year olds had it to themselves. Their parents worked and anyhow, who really watched kids in 1986? They spent the days playing in the woods or on the playground, riding their bikes and trying to impress each other. Each has his own issues. Eddie's mother has just opened the first abortion clinic in town and their family is getting threats. Fat Gov is the leader as he is the most confident; his parents run the local pub. Hoppo's mother was the local cleaning woman. Metal Mickey had an obnoxious older brother who loved to make the gang's life miserable. Nicky was the only girl; her father was the preacher and he had a group that protested at the clinic every day.

The kids led a generally carefree life but that summer everything changed. It started at the fair where they witnessed a horrific accident and Eddie helped save a life, making him a hero for a while. The real hero was their teacher, Mr. Halloran. That was the summer they got chalk and spent time leaving coded messages for each other. That was also the year they found out about death.

Now it's thirty years later and Micky has come back to town, the most apparent success among them all. Eddie is now a teacher himself but still lives in the same house where he rents a room to a young woman named Chloe. Fat Gov now runs the pub his parents ran and Hoppo is still his best friend. Micky left town and is a successful ad executive. Nicky moved away after the events of that summer and the guys lost track of her long ago.

Micky comes to see Ed (as he now thinks of himself) and Ed's not sure he's glad about it. Micky wants to make money off the events of that summer thirty years ago and the gang who discovered the bodies. He's back in town to try to get Ed to help with the writing of a book and has lined up media events. But his return leads to the return of tensions and death. Can Ed and his gang from that long ago summer find the truth once and for all?

C.J. Tudor has written a nostalgic yet suspenseful psychological thriller that readers will enjoy. This is her debut novel but won't be her last as this one is getting great reviews. Each character is fully developed and readers will remember their own young days and young friendships, taut with shared adventures and the first stirrings of danger and betrayals. This book is recommended for mystery readers.

Great writer. Interesting plot and suspenseful. Kept me guessing until the end. Not as scary and nightmare inducing as mentioned in review but still a good book

The Chalk Man centers around a small town in the U.K. that experienced a brutal crime in the 1980s. It is now 2006, and Edward Adams is a schoolteacher living in the same house in which he grew up. One day he gets a mysterious note containing a stick figure and a pice of chalk, which causes memories of his childhood and the chalk figures he drew with his friends to resurface. Who is bringing the chalk men back after all these years? Has the time finally come for the secrets of the past to be exposed?
Tudor's novel is a psychological suspense/thriller novel somewhat in the style of Gone Girl and Lianne Moriarty's books. Perspective shifts between 1986 and 2006, with bits and pieces of information revealed gradually as the story progresses. It is a fairly quick read, and enjoyable for fans of this genre.

I don't believe this book lived up to the hype. The mystery was strange and not everything was answered by the end of the book. The plot was a little hard to follow with the back and forth. There were some red herrings that took away from the storyline too much.

Four teens find creative ways to entertain themselves in the summer of 1986. Chalk figures are the secret code that Eddie and his friends have come up with to communicate with each other. Detailed figures are drawn near their homes as a way to announce their plans. This method ensures them privacy from parents and the neighborhood bullies. One day a mysterious chalk message leads them to a disfigured body in the woods. It chills them to know that the murderer has been watching their activities.

Twenty years later Eddie receives a random chalk figure in the mail. It has been many years since he has connected with his childhood friends. He has tried his best to bury the painful memories of the unsolved murder. Eddie is not the only member of the crew to receive a chalk figure and this brings the friends back together. United, they try to solve the mystery of the notes and how they are connected to events from their past.

The Chalk Man is a debut novel by C.J. Tudor. This is a well-executed mystery with great characters and surprising twists and turns. I impatiently wait for future works from this author.

Eddie and his little gang of friends are growing up in a little town in England in the 80s. Eddie and a teacher, albino Mr. Halloran, help to save a girl’s life after a freak accident at the fair. Mr. Halloran, who likes to draw in chalk, gives one of the boys a box of chalk for his birthday and this becomes their calling card. They all have a different colored chalk man that they use for messages to each other. But everything is not so idyllic in this little burg, when a young girl is murdered (among some other strange happenings), the chalk men lead the boys to the body, well, body pieces.

It’s now 2016 and Eddie is a teacher in town. Things have happened to separate the gang but when one of them comes back and tells Eddie that he is writing a book about the murder (he says he knows who did it), strange things start happening all over again.

I think I expected this to be a bit more eerie but it was an engrossing read with a few things thrown in that you don’t expect. And that is not to say that it didn’t have a shadowy quality throughout. There is also a sadness that flows in the story, a sadness and a need for forgiveness. I had my suspicions about a few characters and one of them was true. Kudos to me! I loved the going back and forth in time to really flesh out the characters. And the ending, well okay, that was completely eerie and unexpected. This is a really great job for a debut novel. I am looking forward to what the future will give us from C.J. Tudor.

This review is my humble opinion but a big thanks to Netgalley and Crown Publishing for a copy of this book.

So this one was on my most anticipated list and everyone I know raved about it but I feel like I must have read the wrong book cause I didn't really like it that much. It makes me feel a bit ranty and I don't like that. 

It's told in the POV of Eddie (Ed) from alternating timelines of 1986 and 2016. It's about a group of friends who are about twelve years old. You have your basic fat boy, jerk, nerd and quiet one, plus a girl. It starts out with a prologue about a dead girl, then starts in 2016, which is 30 years later. Ed is a teacher and he gets a chalk figure in the mail and then a visit from an old friend.

In the 1986 timeline we get to know the group enough to know I am not a fan of them at all. They each have their own set of issues and it was hard to see how they ever became friends and easy to see how they could drift apart. All the information dump was leading up to the discovery of a body in the woods and the chalk drawings that led them there. 

In 2016, I didn't like Ed any more as an adult. He was kind of pathetic and weird. Just like he was as a kid only grown. It was during this timeline that we start piecing together some things of the past which leads to the discovery of who killed the girl back in 1986 and who killed the recent person who was one of them. Can't say as I am trying not to spoil anything. 

Several times I almost just gave up on this book, it was so boring. I thought I was getting a suspenseful book and that The Chalk Man was like some huge thing and it wasn't. I pretty much guessed most of the plot points, even who put the chalk  leading to the woods. I figured out who the killer was but because of certain things wasn't to sure how it was done but should have known. 

I think because I didn't like Eddie the kid or Ed the adult that much that I really just didn't care about things that happened. Some things felt like so much filler, I just wanted them to find the body. I didn't care about a lot of the other things and I guess that is why it bored me. I felt no thrill or suspense and by the end I was just like get to the reveal so I can see if I am right and how it all happened. I think the one big surprise was who killed their friend in the 2016 timeline. 

This was obviously just not a book for me. I totally wanted to love it but didn't and that happens. All my favorite bloggers I follow who has read it thought it was great, so you might too. I think maybe it's cause I thought it was going to be different, in my mind I had a different storyline out of that blurb...lol. I don't know but it was just meh. I am glad I finished it but it won't be on any favorite list for me.

Wow. This book was awesome!!!! Loved how it was told from the charecters from childhood to present. From the gruesome openeing to the last page, this book grabs and does not let go. Friends are at a fair and something happens. And the book takes off from there. There are a lot of twists that I did not see cominjg. The book builds up to the climax and is neatly tied up. If you are looking for a book that will keep you saying "one more page/chapter, this is the book for you. Kudos to the author!!! Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

C.J. Tudor has done a fantastic job of weaving an addicting, mysterious story!

It is the summer of 1986, Eddie and his gang – Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo, and Nicky are enjoying their last weeks of summer before school starts back up. They don’t have a care in the world and life is good until things take a turn and their chalk man game takes on a life of its own.

This book alternates between 1986 and 2016. Eddie (Ed) bridges these two time periods. In 1986 he is twelve years old and in 2016 he is a forty-two year old English teacher. Ed is reliving his childhood and trying to make sense of what happened and what those events have to do with the letters he and his childhood friends have received.

I get nostalgic for stories that take place in the 80’s, I’m an 80’s girl at heart, so I love the references to fashion, music, and so on during this time period. We didn’t have handheld electronics devices and the internet was non-existent. In the 80’s kids played outside, rode their bikes, and found ways to amuse themselves just as Eddie and his gang did.

The further I got into this story the more mysterious it got. There were quite a few storylines in both time periods revealing pieces of the puzzle and I was curious how they would all fit together.

When I started this story I was expecting a good mystery surrounding mysterious chalk men. To my surprise this story is much more than meets the eye – it is a coming of age story of friendship, with many important life lessons that can reach beyond the written pages of a book.

I liked the cliffhangers sprinkled throughout the story. I wanted to keep reading it because I wanted to know what would happen next. The ending was a surprise.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review.

Alternating between two timelines, this story centers around Eddie and his childhood friends, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo, and Nicky.  The past focuses on the events that transpired that summer; from the mischief and adventure of their adolescence, to their discovery of a dismembered body. In the present, Eddie is a bachelor still living in his childhood home. One day, Eddie receives a letter containing a chalk man drawing, dredging up haunted memories of a past that was thought to have been put to rest. While uncovering mysteriously drawn chalk man figures, Eddie's ghostly subconscious attempts to make sense of it all. Throughout this novel the reader is drawn into Eddie’s world, but Eddie isn’t the only one seeking answers to the tragedies of the past.

The Chalk Man is a tale that will keep you on your toes until you reach its ending. As the plot thickens, and just as you lead yourself into believing you have it all figured out, Tudor slowly unearthed bits of truth that will leave your head spinning.   To believe that this is a debut is a very hard feat, as C.J. Tudor writes like a seasoned bestselling novelist. This novel gave me the vibes of reading Stephen King. The suspense, the switchbacks, the turns, and the juxtaposition of the characters... Bravo!

I particularly enjoyed how Tudor continuously answered all the questions popping into my head. I love when an author covers all bases; refraining from leaving plot holes. Tudor does this effortlessly, even down to connecting the dots on something as simple as a missing wallet.  The 80’s vibe and music references sprinkled throughout this novel were also excellent additions.

C.J. Tutor’s debut is an enticingly bone-chilling novel with well-developed characters and an intriguing plot. Be forewarned that there are some graphic telling, such as bullying acts, that may make you feel a bit squeamish. Still, no reason to avoid this one. My lack of a star is mainly due to, in my opinion, an implausible ending. While enjoyable, some of the events seemed a bit coincidental and I was left with a lacking feeling of wanting a bit more. All in all, this comes highly recommended and the hype surrounding this novel as a must read for 2018 cannot be more factual. Get this in any way possible, you will not be disappointed.