Roger Hyttinen

The Chalk Man is a book whose premise intrigued me right from the get-go, especially the Stranger Things vibe that the story had.

So this follows Eddie Adams (aka Eddie Munster) and his group of friends: Hoppo, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, and Metal Mickey and the narrative jumps back and forth between two different timelines, both told from Eddie’s point of view.

In the 1986 timeline, Eddie is 12-years old, and the kids spend their day riding their bikes around town leaving little chalk stick figure messages for either other — messages only they can understand. But things change for Eddie and his friends when one day, a stick figure leads them to the dismembered body of a young woman. This, however, is only one of the tragedies that tore the community apart that summer for Eddie and his friends. Lots of bad things happen that summer and the small town where Eddie lives is filled with secrets, lies, hypocrisy, and some pretty nasty characters as well.

Thirty-years later in 2016, Eddie is fully grown. What’s interesting about this timeline, is that we get to see how the events that took place 30 years earlier affect Eddie and his friends in the present.

Now as for Eddie, he’s single, a teacher, lives with a rather odd roommate, drinks too much and thinks he’s put his past behind him. But then he receives an anonymous letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure and as it turns out, his friends got the same letter. They assume it’s only a prank until one of them turns up dead. It becomes clear, then, that it’s not a prank and that the past has come back to haunt him. Eddie soon finds himself thrust into a 30-year-old mystery.

I thought the author did an excellent job of juggling the two timelines. This method doesn’t always work well in novels, but Tudor managed to expertly pull it off in a perfectly-paced narrative. She also managed to give us a fantastic set of characters in a convincing small-town setting to both fascinate us and distract us. I enjoyed the curious references surrounding the mysterious “chalk man” thought the story, which added to the plot’s intrigue.

This is definitely one of those stories where you should assume nothing and trust no one, one of my favorite tropes. This results in an addicting and unique story with captivating situations, but also some great twists along the way. The fast-paced storyline kept me utterly engaged until the climactic ending.

Now speaking of the ending, though surprising, I couldn’t quite buy into it. It felt just a bit too much over the top for me, resulting in a badly needed eye-roll. So though I enjoyed the story and the characters, the outrageous ending caused me to knock off a star. But still, I found The Chalk Man to be a thrilling and engaging tale with plenty of surprises. It was dark and sinister, with gobs of creepiness and secrets.

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Behind Closed Doors follows a married couple, Jack and Grace, and from the outside, it looks like they have the perfect marriage and that Grace has the perfect life — she has a beautiful home and a handsome, successful husband who never leaves her side. The people who know them call it true love. But things are not as they appear as hinted at by the title, and that is the premise for this heart-in-your-throat domestic psychological thriller. Right from the very start, there is this intense sense of foreboding that grabs you right by the throat and doesn’t let go until the end.

From reading the blurb, it’s pretty easy to figure out what’s really going on. But the extent of it and the diabolical manner in which it’s executed is what’s shocking. I actually thought the blurb gave too much away, and I wish I’d gone into this book without having read it. Still, it was one hell of a hair-raising journey.

I enjoyed how the story alternated between past and present, told from Grace’s point of view. Here we see how Grace met Jack; we see the early days of their relationship and how things ended up the way they are in the present — a living nightmare.

Now there’s really no jaw-dropping twists, turns or surprises (though the ending was fantastic!) and no great mystery to solve. Instead, we follow along with our heroine as she struggles through her terror to find a way out, and it was the anticipation of the unknown — the anticipation of what may be coming that ratchets up the tension in the book. The suspense level is off the charts.

What I found especially terrifying about this story how easily our heroine found herself trapped and isolated, and the realization while reading it that this could, under the right circumstances, happen to anyone was bone-chilling.

It’s quite an intense story and found it difficult to read at times, not because the content was graphic or gory because it wasn’t. Instead, it was the situation of our heroine — one in which every day was filled with terror — how every taste of certain imminent freedom ended in utter disappointment and frustration.

It’s how the author gave us just enough information to imagine the worst — and just when we think Grace’s situation cannot get any worse, it does.

This harrowing, fast-paced super-claustrophobic story was a page-turner for me. The characters of Grace and Jack were extremely well-fleshed out, complex, and believable. As for the story, it was disturbing on so many levels that it made me feel during several places throughout the book as though I’d been sucker-punched.

It’s a sick, twisted, depraved little book with a villain that is pure evil, and yet, I couldn’t put it down. This phenomenal story about mental abuse taken to the extreme was so expertly plotted and drawn out that I was stunned to learn later that this was the author’s debut novel.

The pacing is flawless; the characterization splendid; but what really stood out for me with this book is the tension that the author creates. It had my heart-pounding most of the time I was reading.

Behind Closed Doors is so incredibly nightmarish, raw, gut-wrenching, and unsettling that it’s impossible not to be taken on a wild emotional ride.

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