It all started in the summer of 1986 at a fair and the story goes from them. Eddie and his four friends: Hoppo, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, and Nicky are twelve years old and are best friends. Through the summer some events occur. Friendships break up. At Fat Gav’s birthday he gets a bucket of chalk. Eddie tells Fat Gav, Hoppo, and Metal Mickey that they could use the chalk to create little chalk men with a secret code to let one another where to meet or secret messages. Each person has a different color.
As 1986 progresses the chalk men start to show up in places they shouldn’t be in. Also, the chalk men leads the boys into the woods where they find body parts of a dismembered body.
Flash forward to 2016 where Eddie who now goes by Ed still lives in his home town and still sees Hoppo and Gav. Their friend Mickey comes into town to pay a visit to Ed and around that time all of them get a letter with a single chalk man in it. This brings back the pass and one of their friends is murdered.
Ed tries to figure out who killed the person back in 1986, who sent the letters to them all, and who killed their friend. Secrets come out and sometimes knowing the answers is not a good thing.
The book starts out really strong and was very gripping. Towards the middle of the book, I was not that engaged in it, however I still thought it was interesting. I really liked how the story was told in chapters marked as 1986 and 2016. This book is well done and a bit disturbing. I do think the book could be a little longer to address some burning questions I have and plot holes. But, overall the book was great and well done for a debut book.
The Chalk Man comes out on January 9, 2018.