In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy little 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 each other as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing will ever be 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 his other friends got the same messages, 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.
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The girl's head rested on a small pile of orange and brown leaves. PROLOGUE
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(@PenguinUKBooks, 11 January 2018, ebook, 342 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I bought this book soon after it came out because I thought it sounded amazing. As usual, I got distracted by a zillion other books and didn't get around to reading it until now. I wish I hadn't waited so long. I loved every word of this book. It reminds me a lot of It by Stephen King, particularly the flashbacks set in 1986 and a few years later. Eddie and his gang remind me so much of The Loser's Club. I loved the fact the chapters move back and forth between 1986 and 2016, gradually revealing horrific events Eddie and his friends experienced in 1986 and how they threaten the present. I didn't want the book to end. Another author to add to by TBR list.