Ok, so I read a debut novel from C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man: A Novel this week, and I have to say, it is the best mystery / thriller I've read in some time, and probably will be for a while.
But wait, before I get too deep into this, I must state that I received an advanced review copy from NetGalley in trade for an honest review, so a big hearty thank you goes out to them, as well as Crown Publishing. (You guys rule!)
Now that I got that legal stuff out of the way, back to it. This novel, plain and simply put, is quite damn amazing. It's so precisely well written, I'm having a hard time believe that this is a debut novel. So to you, C.J. Tudor, I tip my hat.
The Chalk Man: A Novel has the simple premise of a story, being told from the point of view of twelve and forty-two year old Eddie, jumping back and forth through time from 1986 to 2016. As a child, he and his friends have an innocent enough game in which they communicate with little "chalk man" drawings they leave for one another. It's all fun and games until a series of these chalk men lead them to an area where they stumble upon a dead body. Thirty years later, as Eddie would seem at rest with the past, a mysterious chalk man drawing comes to him and digs up a series of event surrounding the death he and his friends uncovered as youth.
To me, there's nothing worse than predicting the plot twist of a book, and I thought I had this one figured out... and boy was I wrong. In a swirl of uncovered truths, lies, and secrets, The Chalk Man: A Novel the a fast paced, edge of your seat thriller that must be added to your bookshelf in early 2018. It'll keep you guessing with each flip of the page right on to the very end.
This book gets nothing short of 5 stars. Hell, I'd give it six if that were a thing.
The Chalk Man: A Novel by C.J. Tudor, comes on January 9, 2018 through Crown Publishing.
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