By C. J. Tudor
Goodreads Synopsis
“In 1986, Eddie and his friends were 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.” (Goodreads)
My Take
Character Connection 
I love an unreliable narrator and that is who The Chalk Man focuses on – our main protagonist is unlikeable and you now something is up – you just can’t pinpoint what. There are numerous other characters and all of their stories are interwoven together. Character Connection loses a point because it feels very reminiscent of IT by Stephen King without digging deep enough into anyone other than our Narrator.
Twisty-Turns
I really enjoyed how you get new information with each chapter – it jumps back and forth between 1986 and 2016 and the reader receives more background on the current events each time. The twists are slowly revealed as you determine each character’s flaws (or wrongdoing) along the way. There are subtle clues to our “big reveal” along the way so I wouldn’t consider it a huge twist at the end. This was more of a slow burn with the reader receiving measured revelations along the way.
Psych-Links
The Chalk Man centers around the idea that everyone is “messed-up” in some way. Some characters are the product of their environment, others have been impacted by significant trauma, and still others could be diagnosed with any number of sociopathic or psychopathic disorders. Basically, the message is that no character is fully innocent – you just have to figure out who is guilty of what. The story also deals with Alzheimer Disease in a unique way.
Cine-ability
The Chalk Man could be made into a film but it would be difficult to not have constant feelings of it simply being a less-frightening IT. You would have to jump back and forth from 1986 (needing to cast 12 year-old kids) and modern-day (casting adult actors). For my own purposes I simply cast the adult actors because child-casting is supremely difficult and you must either choose the entire IT cast or the entire Stranger Things cast – in my humble opinion 🙂
The Merry Murderino’s Overall Rating
The Chalk Man is definitely a slow burn of a story – it is not action-filled or what I would label as a thriller. However, it deals very well with darker topics that are either avoided or the characters turn out “just fine” after experiencing them. I appreciated the fact that no one was perfectly good or OK after dealing with traumatic experiences. It is a heavier read with descriptions of dismemberment, molestation, alcohol addiction, and touches on child abuse and abortion as well. This is NOT a light read – read with the expectation that you aren’t going to end with warm-fuzzies.
Wanna read this book? Get it from Amazon right HERE
The Merry Murderino 
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