Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The cover intrigued me but I found myself disappointed about the story as a whole. I found that certain elements didn’t pan out or give clear answers and despite the creepy atmosphere and the interesting aspects with the history I just couldn’t get into the novel very much at all.

I was so excited to get my hands on this, but it was so aggressively average. I hate to say it, but I was disappointed.

Black Chuck had a great premise and start but just fell flat at the end. Ren and Evie were interesting protagonists will detailed backgrounds. I liked learning about where they came from and how they were trying to fit in. They both shared so much in common so it wasn’t a surprise to see them find their way to each other.

Unfortunately, the climax was a letdown. The novel had an almost supernatural slant with the wendigo, before we settled on the truth. I understand the author was trying to highlight Ren’s inner demons. It took the end of the book to full realize the genre of this novel.

I really appreciate the advanced copy. Thank you.

This novel was hard to read, it felt like work, which really took away from the tale itself.
The feel of the novel was fantastic, as were the characters.

The Breakdown:
Shaun is dead. That is all that the characters in Black Chuck can think about and everyone is in shock. This story weaves a tale of death under a complete mystery of who did kill Shaun and why? Re is Shaun’s best friend and they are practically brothers. All of their lives they have lived next door to each other in a very rural town with limited friends to call on. Everyone calls Re a psycho, so he is the clear suspect and Re even thinks that he could be the culprit as well. There is so much more going on in this small town just waiting to rise to the surface.
I am not huge horror/mystery fan, but the cover was very intriguing, and I was reminded of the show Hannibal. The Elk on the terrified me and had me dreaming crazy things so I thought I would request this book to give into the fear already there. I did not love the book, but it was an alright story. I must admit that I wanted the main character to actually be an evil demon and didn’t like the change in his circumstances in the end. There were also some missing details that I needed to be cleared up that never seemed to be brought to the light in the book. That’s why I gave it a 3.5 Star rating.
The Characters:
Réal Dufresne is often called a psycho and has quite the reputation. However, I still have no idea where that comes from and his character is very caring and compassionate. Re takes care of his four younger brothers on a daily basis because their parents must work so hard to raise a growing family of teenage boys. He also finds out that Shaun’s girlfriend is pregnant and now going to be a single mother. He goes out of his way to keep her secrets and even starts to consider raising the baby as his own with her. Their new “relationship” is quite tenuous and seems wrong to both of them as it is a betrayal of the person that they were supposed to love – Shaun- who is now deceased. When another best friend of Real named Sunny and girlfriend of the fourth piece in their clique, Alex, throws herself at him, Re turns her down because he is a good guy. He cannot hurt any more of his friends. Now does that sound like a psycho to you? Hence 3.5 stars.
For most of the book, Real is convinced that he is a Wendigo like his uncle named Black Chuck who ate his own daughter one cold winter. Real has had nightmares about this his entire life and when the state of Shaun’s body is revealed it appears that something as eaten most of him. Real even enlists the help of local tribesman healers to cure the demon raging in him. I love a good tale of murder and mayhem but to avoid spoilers let’s just say that the ending did not live up to my expectation and was in fact quite the opposite of what I was expecting.
Evie was Shaun’s girlfriend and is now facing the world as a single mother who hasn’t graduated high school yet. With Shaun gone, Evie turns to his friends for comfort and finds more than she bargained for with Real. I thought she was the weakest character and did not really feel a connection to her. Plus, she never really evolved, and I hated that this horror book took the happy ending route.
Sunny and Alex were the last two pieces to the quartet that Evie and Shaun hung out with on a regular basis. Also, they are kind of close to Real and Sunny proclaims to Evie that he also belongs to her even though she is with Alex. Sunny is the opposite of her name and pretty much a bitch the entire book. Alex seems to be your average stoner but hides the fact that he trying to join a random drug-dealing motorcycle club that has nothing to really to with the story until like the last 2 chapters. Why were they needed in this story arc? Yet another unanswered question and unnecessity that caused the 3.5 stars.
Conclusion:
This book was an easy read. I read all but 3 chapters today but there was too much outside weirdness going on to really be a great 5 Star read. Now I am not saying that I did not enjoy it, but I believe that it could have been edited better and a few minor changes introduced to explain the issues laid out in the other portions of the review. I was seriously expecting a full-on Wendigo attacks, faces to be ripped off, and entrails scattered over the ground to form intricate, morbid mosaics. Instead, it is a romance story disguised with mayhem and I even ended up hating Shaun. You cannot hate the dead it’s not right. Even if they are book characters!
I would, however, read more books if the story was set as a series. Since then, perhaps, some of the questions could be better answered. I also must commend the author for doing her research and using the Native American cultures referenced in the content in a tactful, educational way. I do believe that she gave them justice!

Orca Book Publishers
TBP April 3rd, 2018
Psycho. Sick. Dangerous. Real Dufresne's reputation precedes him. When the mangled body of his best friend, Shaun, turns up in a field just east of town, tough-as-hell Real blames himself. But except for the nightmares, all Re remembers is beating the living crap out of Shaun the night of his death.

Shaun's girlfriend, sixteen-year-old Evie Hawley, keeps her feelings locked up tight. But now she's pregnant, and the father of her baby is dead. And when Real looks to her to atone for his sins, everything goes sideways. Fast.

The tighter Evie and Real get, the faster things seem to fall apart. And falling in love might just be the card that knocks the whole house down.- Goodreads

This book isn't exactly what the summary makes it out to be, so I am going to breakdown some things first.

Characters

They were all toxic. Shaun was the king of toxic and all the circle of friends had no idea what to do once the toxic was gone. So you know what they did? Became more toxic in their interactions with each other and how they dealt with their own emotions. It was hard to read because the book starts off with the grief process but as you continue reading you realize for the most part this doesn't have a whole bunch to do with Shaun then you think. What keeps the group together is Shaun's death but it stopped being about Shaun's friendship a long time ago.

I understand that everyone grieves differently and I understand first and foremost these are teenagers who do not know how to deal with their emotions.There is a thin line between not knowing what to do and just being reckless and that is Evie.

Evie and Real have next to no personality. The author tries to add to Real by making the religious aspect of his life the driving force to why he does what he does. But there isn't enough meat to make it believable; there isn't enough to make me believe that he truly believes what he is saying and that was disappointing.

Evie is confused and rightfully so. But she allows her confusion to force people into things and she makes some really dumb decision that changes so much.

Romance

It was forced. . . initially. The author was able to clean it up, where it felt real and the confusion of falling for the best friend of your dead boyfriend was strong. I appreciated the relationship more as the book went on but it was forced when it started up.

What happened to Shaun? 

You know what happens to Shaun. You know the moment when you see his body. However, his friends don't know and that confuses me. They all speculate what happened when the answer is right in front of their face. I slightly understand Real and why he goes the direction he does but for everyone else, it doesn't click what happened and there are so many assumptions, which leads to so many issues/confusions. I really did not like that about this book. The author choose to leave the characters in the dark as opposed to building what lead up to what happened and the "forbidden" relationship.

Overall, the book was way too long. It was obvious that is was being dragged out and there was a bit of redundancy. 

2 Pickles

In the aftermath of their friend’s death, “Black Chuck” takes us on a journey of grief, guilt and fear as the surviving friends struggle to make sense of what happened and deal with the fallout when secrets threaten to tear them apart.

It’s interesting to see the two main characters who we’re told weren’t that close before Shaun’s death, suddenly find themselves thrown into almost parallel situations where they have to deal with the consequences and pain of that loss all the while keeping the secret of the thing that lies hidden inside them threatening to change their lives forever.

This book is more of an exploration into what happens next when someone you know dies and how at the end of the day you can’t really know everything about someone. What you see in public, a stoner, the loner, or a king, can all be masks that hide the true monster or hero beneath and it’s not until you’re forced to recognize that truth can you uncover which is the true face.

In a side note completely unrelated to my rating because I understand why it couldn’t happen in the novel and still work because it would have taken up too much of the story leaving little time for the plot to play out and make an impact like it does as it stands, but I would have loved to see this story told with more of the cultural aspects of the Indigenous people mentioned especially when I got to the authors note and there was a reference to how much work she put into getting those parts as accurate and respectful as possible. The Black Chuck story itself and the internal struggle paired with the healing aspect to handle that could be an interesting subject for a horror type novel.

**thank you to netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**