Black Chalk

9781846557286

356 Pages
Publisher: Random House UK – North America
Release Date: April 1, 2014

Fiction (Adult), General Fiction (Adult), Mystery, Thriller, Competition, Violence

Six university students decide to play the game but none of them thought it would change their lives. The game began in college, but it did not end there. Fourteen years later, the last two players must face off to find the ultimate winner. This was not a game for the faint of heart. There were injuries and even death. The consequences were specifically developed for each player to affect them on a personal level.

This was an unusual book. The game was the main line of the story but it jumped from the past to a time in the near present and then to the present. At times I was confused what timeframe I was reading. The story was written in different points of view depending on who was speaking. It was an interesting read. The story was steady and the characters were well developed. I did not expect the game to go so far and for the book to be so deep. If you like mysteries with lots of twists, you will enjoy this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this title. I attempted to read it and was not compelled to finish.

A fabulous read.
I would recommend to family and friends.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

Reviewed on Goodreads

There is a lot to like about this book - the blurb does an excellent job of putting it across and enticing you to read, and the mystery of the first half of the book is well built. I liked the fact that the story was being told to us many years after 'The Game' and that we find out most of the details in flashback as it allowed the author to mete out the tension.

Unfortunately, I was not especially invested in the group of students - I keep seeing books compared to The Secret History, so I really must read it sometime - Chad is an interesting character, but the rest of the group fell a bit flat for me.

I wonder if, had I read this book at another time, I might have liked it more - my appetite at the moment for shadowy groups controlling people's lives is small, perhaps influenced by our current political situation?

Regardless, I gave it three stars as I enjoyed a lot of elements of the book, but I felt the ending was too drawn out for my liking, and yet it still managed to end incredibly abruptly once all was revealed.

What appeared at first to be a light-hearted game played by six university students, gradually becomes more and more demeaning and humiliating. The inclusion of an outside influence increases the implications of the game. I found it difficult to finished the book because the psychological fears it engendered became too much.

Review: BLACK CHALK by Christopher Yates

There are so many twists in this labyrinthine novel that I felt quite like a pretzel when I finished, but I also came away with a feeling of satisfaction at reading such a deep, rich, story. I can't say I liked or admired some of the characters, and even those I did empathize with had failings (don't we all), but the author's gift absorbed me into the story regardless. At the ending I kept demanding of one of the characters, "Why didn't you? Couldn't you just--?" That didn't alter my enjoyment of the novel, and would have led to some other ending (and I took a personal object lesson from it).