by C. J. Tudor
First published 2018
Eddie and his friends start drawing chalk stick figures around their English town in 1986. The innocent game turns sinister when the drawings begin showing up in places the children never made them. Someone else is creating the figures now, and they seem to mark locations where terrible things happen. First comes a gruesome accident. Then they discover a body. Eddie grows up carrying the weight of that summer, but thirty years later the chalk figures return. The symbols that once marked tragedy in his childhood now threaten to destroy his adult life. Eddie must confront the truth about what really happened when he was twelve, even if it means facing the person who has been drawing the chalk men all along. The past refuses to stay buried in this small town where everyone knows everyone else's secrets. Some games never truly end, and some symbols carry more power than children should ever wield.
Genres: suspense, mystery, thriller
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: past-haunts-present, unreliable-narrator
Setting: England
Period: 1986, 2010s
352 pages · ebook · Penguin Books Ltd
Content warnings: death, violence