Book Review - The Drift by C.J. Tudor

The Drift by C.J. Tudor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Synopsis: Survival can be murder . . .

Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. Evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, her coach careered off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors.

Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She's in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board.

Carter is gazing out of the window of an isolated ski chalet that he and his companions call home. As their generator begins to waver in the storm, the threat of something lurking in the chalet's depths looms larger.

Outside, the storm rages. Inside each group, a killer lurks.

But who?

And will anyone make it out alive? . . .

My Thoughts: I would love to watch this as a movie! Fast paced and enjoyable right up until the very end. I usually don't like stories with a lot of characters in it but it worked well here as they were divided into three distinct groups and very easy to keep separate. I shivered the entire time I was reading this not just the chilling story with the virus but the descriptiveness of the cold environment all the characters were in. and Wow when everything began coming together....pure genius! Would have easily been a 5 star read but the ending left me wanting a bit more......

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Book Review - A Sliver of Darkness by C.J. Tudor

A Sliver of Darkness by C.J. Tudor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 Synopsis: The debut short story collection from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man, featuring ten bone-chilling and mind-bending tales

Timeslips. Doomsday scenarios. Killer butterflies. C. J. Tudor's novels are widely acclaimed for their dark, twisty suspense plots, but with A Sliver of Darkness, she pulls us even further into her dizzying imagination.

In Final Course, the world has descended into darkness, but a group of old friends make time for one last dinner party. In Runaway Blues, thwarted love, revenge, and something very nasty stowed in a hat box converge. In Gloria, a strange girl at a service station endears herself to a cold-hearted killer, but can a leopard really change its spots? And in I'm Not Ted, a case of mistaken identity has unforeseen, fatal consequences.

Riveting and explosively original, A Sliver of Darkness is C. J. Tudor at her most wicked and uninhibited.

My Thoughts: I don't normally enjoy or even read short story collections but I love this authors writing and couldn't pass this up. I was surprisingly pleased and happy I did give the book a chance! Each short tale is started with a brief introduction as to where the author came up with the idea for it and it gave me more of a personal feel because of that.

There were a nice variety with a bit of something for everybody it seems and I only really came across maybe two that I only felt meh about. Some of my favorites were Gloria, End of the Liner, and Dust.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

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Book Review - The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

Synopsis: In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy 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 one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever 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 that his friends got the same message, 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.

My Thoughts:  The Chalk Man was so danged good! I had a hard time putting it down until I had completed it. Something happened in the prologue and was revealed at the end and I was really shocked at who had it. Well heck there were so many things revealed that were WOW moments to be honest thru out the story! Lots of twists and eye raising!

I usually don't like books that keep jumping from one time period to another but it actually worked to The Chalk Man's advantage and helped me follow along better to what was going on and with whom.

So hard to believe this is a debut!!! I can't wait to pick up her next book "The Other People"!

About the Author:

C. J. Tudor was born in Salisbury and grew up in Nottingham, where she still lives with her partner and young daughter.

She left school at sixteen and has had a variety of jobs over the years, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, shop assistant, ad agency copywriter and voice over.

In the early nineties, she fell into a job as a television presenter for a show on Channel 4 called Moviewatch. Although a terrible presenter, she got to interview acting legends such as Sigourney Weaver, Michael Douglas, Emma Thompson and Robin Williams. She also annoyed Tim Robbins by asking a question about Susan Sarandon’s breasts and was extremely flattered when Robert Downey Junior showed her his chest.

While writing the Chalk Man she ran a dog-walking business, walking over twenty dogs a week as well as looking after her little girl.

The Chalk Man was inspired by a tub of chalks a friend bought for her daughter’s second birthday. One afternoon they drew chalk figures all over the driveway. Later that night she opened the back door to be confronted by weird stick men everywhere. In the dark, they looked incredibly sinister. She called to her partner: ‘These chalk men look really creepy in the dark . . .’