Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by whatbritreads
The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor
4.0
*Thank you to Penguin Michael Joseph for sending me a copy of this book to review!*
Firstly, I’m in shock that this book was written by a female author (absolute W for Brit, who was sceptical about picking up a book written by a man). Secondly, it has been what feels like an eternity since I was genuinely invested in a crime novel and the plot had me interested. Congrats CJ Tudor you’ve reminded me why I like the genre.
This was quite violent and disturbing right from the offset, and it didn’t really calm down from there. I know the genre is quite dark and gritty but there are some real scenes of graphic violence and abuse in here that made me really uncomfortable so just brace yourself for that. Parts of this book were really disgusting, and some parts were clearly there for shock value.- they added nothing useful to the story.
The style of narrative flipping back and forth between past events and present day worked really well here to tell the story and unravel things at a perfect pace. I was pleasantly surprised by how many mini cliffhangers there were between chapters. This book had me guessing and constantly flipping the pages trying to figure out what was going on. I never did guess anything even remotely correct. It had a really unsettling aura to it constantly, and reading this you just always felt like something was off but you could never put your finger on it.
The writing here was okay, fairly typical of the genre in its basic yet quite overly descriptive of the mundane nature. I know parts of the book were set in the 80s, but for me the amount of unnecessary slurs used in the book was a bit of a joke. I just don’t feel like that kind of language added anything and just made me uncomfortable. There are many ways to convey judgement and bullying without that kind of language, especially in modern books.
I got confused a couple of times following the story due to the sheer number of characters we’re expected to follow. Because of this, as it got closer to the end and plot twists were being revealed it was quite hard to follow the actual string of events and fully understand the way the book ended for me. It ended up being quite complex and I’m not sure I fully understood what happened in the last 70 or so pages. It was quite a slow burn up to that point, then everything started happening at once.
Overall I devoured this book. I really haven’t enjoyed or got lost in a crime book like that in a while so it was fun.
Firstly, I’m in shock that this book was written by a female author (absolute W for Brit, who was sceptical about picking up a book written by a man). Secondly, it has been what feels like an eternity since I was genuinely invested in a crime novel and the plot had me interested. Congrats CJ Tudor you’ve reminded me why I like the genre.
This was quite violent and disturbing right from the offset, and it didn’t really calm down from there. I know the genre is quite dark and gritty but there are some real scenes of graphic violence and abuse in here that made me really uncomfortable so just brace yourself for that. Parts of this book were really disgusting, and some parts were clearly there for shock value.- they added nothing useful to the story.
The style of narrative flipping back and forth between past events and present day worked really well here to tell the story and unravel things at a perfect pace. I was pleasantly surprised by how many mini cliffhangers there were between chapters. This book had me guessing and constantly flipping the pages trying to figure out what was going on. I never did guess anything even remotely correct. It had a really unsettling aura to it constantly, and reading this you just always felt like something was off but you could never put your finger on it.
The writing here was okay, fairly typical of the genre in its basic yet quite overly descriptive of the mundane nature. I know parts of the book were set in the 80s, but for me the amount of unnecessary slurs used in the book was a bit of a joke. I just don’t feel like that kind of language added anything and just made me uncomfortable. There are many ways to convey judgement and bullying without that kind of language, especially in modern books.
I got confused a couple of times following the story due to the sheer number of characters we’re expected to follow. Because of this, as it got closer to the end and plot twists were being revealed it was quite hard to follow the actual string of events and fully understand the way the book ended for me. It ended up being quite complex and I’m not sure I fully understood what happened in the last 70 or so pages. It was quite a slow burn up to that point, then everything started happening at once.
Overall I devoured this book. I really haven’t enjoyed or got lost in a crime book like that in a while so it was fun.