Black Chalk

He would force himself to make friends with one British student at Pitt Because any friendship was a path and paths always led elsewhere To paths and new places Maybe even a better kind of life And then, if he could only find a new world, Chad would skip down its lanes Wherever they took him.ahhhh, famous last words is is one of those cases where i feel i have to remind people that three stars from me is not a low rating three is my broadest range of star distribution, and this one falls on the [...]

Anyone who doesn t see the danger in an innocent board game played between loved ones has never played Risk with my father and I It wasn t pretty, and friends who occasionally joined in would usually get to see a whoooooooooole new side to my family Alliances were formedere was sometimes yelling and pleading And by the end it was almost always down to me and my dad both of us ignoring everyone around us It s just a game , I ve had enough , This is stupid I m going to bed Can t we allllllll just [...]

There s an inherently difficult challenge in writing a taut thriller by simple virtue of the fact that, in the vast majority of cases, the revelation of a thing is always less scary creepy horrifying than the imagining of the thing prior to its revelation insert joke here re except in the case of the removal of my pants As a writer, then, you re faced with three options, and it s how you balance those options that determines success or lack thereof in terms of keeping readers riveted The first o [...]

I received a copy of this book thanks to the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, my thanks for the opportunity.One game Six students Five survivors.It was only ever meant to be a game.A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University But then the game changed the stakes grew higher and the dares personal, humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tra [...]

The premise of Black Chalk is fascinating In the 1990s, a group of six friends at an Oxford University college invent an intense, secretive psychological game This mainly consists of a series of increasingly humiliating and personal forfeits, which the player must carry out without letting anyone know they are dares And the stakes are high, as after the intervention of a mysterious game society at the university, the victor stands to win 10,000 Back to the present day one of the group and it s n [...]

Where to start with this disaster of a novel Black Chalk is about a game The jacket and reviews will hint that the game is mysteriously dark and devious and will have a shocking conclusion If only In truth, the game is never really described, despite the very long lead up to it and all the build up The consequences are built up even , they must be terrible, truly horrific and psychologically devastating, right I mean, that s what the book is about, right Nope The consequences are boring and lame [...]

I m not really sure what to say about this book I picked it up because the synopsis grabbed me College, games, friends, someone mysteriously dies, it all sounded really interesting I liked the narration of the book as well It was slightly confusing at first as it kept switching from 1st person present, to 3rd person past, to even an odd 2nd person I may have to brush up on my grammar but I think this is right sometimes, but it was clever and served the story and the reveals well What I didn t li [...]

This book held such promise from the initial synopsis As soon as I read it on , I knew I had to have it rfect for fans of the high tension and expert pacing of The Secret History Using my second favorite novel of all time in the premise of a book, and likening the two, how could I not want to read this As you can probably tell, my expectations were sky high with the hopes of reading something on par with Ms Donna Tartt.And let me say this Everything about this book fell flat.The characters, the [...]

Black Chalk by Christopher J Yates is one interesting ride down memory lane with a character named Jolyon who recounts how his life changed dramatically 14 years earlier Six friends decide to embark on a game where after a series of rounds, consequences will be given in gradual escalation in order to prevent elimination if one of those rounds are lost The game is meant to be strictly psychological A game of the mind But of course, with all good things, the game costs than these six can pay, eve [...]

Coming September from Random House UK Vintage PublishingThank you kindly to the publisher and the author for the advance copy of this novel via Netgalley.One game Six students Five survivors.At University, six friends come together and play a game Its a silly little game imagined by two of their number a game of actions followed by consequences growing ever intricate in nature with one winner to remain standing at the end Fun Oh yes Or no As the game becomes ever involved, the stakes higher, t [...]

Six friends come together at Oxford University one American, five British four male and two female As we get to know Chad, Jolyon, Mike, Emilia, Dee and Jack, we discover how they began to play a game the game whose consequences went too far and the implications of which are still felt fourteen years later when one of the characters looks back on what happened The game begins in earnest when some of the students are at the freshers fair and come across the Game soc The stall is manned by three y [...]

This is a book of psychological suspense about six friends in their first year at Oxford The four male and two female students invent a game, under the sponsorship of a mysterious club In this diabolical game, the participants must perform increasingly embarrassing but not illegal or dangerous acts If they fail or withdraw from the game they forfeit their cash deposits The ultimate winner takes the entire prize These people are not after the prize however It is the win that drives them.The narr [...]

Black Chalk by Christopher J YatesIn the early 1990s six bright, self satisfied, Oxford first years spend time together smoking and drinking but want out of life So they get involved in the game This is a series of dares with embarrassment the aim and penalities As you might expect, it gets out of hand Fourteen years later, one is dead and only two are left in the game.Need a one word summary Frustrating.There were some nice ideas but they weren t as well developed as they could have been The c [...]

Don t be fooled by the whole you ll like this if you like The Secret History marketing As with many other books which are lazily given this epitaph in the hope that it will shift copies, the only thing Black Chalk has in common with The Secret History is that it s mainly set in a university Other than that the two books have nothing in common, with Black Chalk suffering from two dimensional unsympathetic characters, a plot which isn t as clever as it thinks it is and twists which you can see com [...]

Black Chalk is a thriller with a great hook a group of students at Oxford begin playing a high stakes Game, daring each other to bear ever deeper levels of humiliation as the rounds continue and the pay off grows closer This hook plays adeptly with the social niceties so embedded in English society, wryly raising the question how can doing benign things cause us such anguish when we have to go against social norms Indeed, the scenes that dramatise the Game s dares are by far its best squirmy and [...]

I can t believe I kept reading this thing until the end A cast of unlikable characters play adult versions of mean spirited junior high school pranks on each other as part of a game to which they are totally committed for no apparent reason I kept hoping for a slam bang ending, but the finish was an unsurprising slow fade.

Review BLACK CHALK by Christopher YatesThere 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 Th [...]

Black Chalk is a book that falls firmly into the Sure, I liked it category Many people seem to feel the same The premise of the book, and the promise of the book, is what really sustained it for me.Six friends, new to a prestigious university where they are, for various reasons, different than most, begin a game that we are promised has tragic consequences When the initial three players first begin to describe the wicked, devious, abhorrent, mind blowingly cruel consequences that losers of the r [...]

There needs to be a way on of recording why you added a book onto your to read shelf I probably saw a review of it somewhere Looking at other reviews, it mentions that its like a secret history , which would explain why I added it.This is one of those books where I lost any idea about the characters Who they were, what motivated them, what their interactions with each other I had no idea.The split time line didn t help The weak characterisation didn t help I hope to god I never read another book [...]

DNF d early on,this book lacked fluidity and a clear vision I was bored,my apologies to those who loved it Just not my thing.

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Define intrigue Black Chalk caught my attention with it s synopsis, spooky cover and cryptic blurbs right away Any author who is called the British Stephen King is definitely worth a looksee I think the plot is an interesting one Six very young, very quirky friends from different backgrounds end up at university together Then through about 100 pages of not a lot happening they decide to play a game Still with me Disaster ensues They screw up their friendships with each other, and possibly the re [...]

Black Chalk is Christopher J Yates s debut novel It was only ever meant to be a game A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University But then the game changed the stakes grew higher and the dares personal, humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results Black Chalk opens in present day with an unnamed narrator remembering his first days at Oxford and the beginn [...]

Books come in many types fiction and non fiction, long and short, tedious and fascinating One type is a quick read and another is a savoring read Black Chalk by Christopher J Yates is a book to savor It tells the story of six friends attending the fictional Pitt College in the non fictional Oxford University The story swings in time from the present to fourteen years ago when the six friends meet.Each friend, like all of us, has his or hers own insecurities The American, Chad, is ashamed of havi [...]

I heard the review on NPR and had to buy this book I want you to go into it cold, knowing nothing and expecting nothing, like I did I want you to suck it down in one breath, like a lungful of dark water For it to hit you the same way it did me like a sucker punch delivered slowly and with exquisite precision NPR It was intriguing since there was so little he could tell about it without giving something important away It was a page turner and I was very interested to continue reading to see what [...]

What an enjoyable book I heard about this one from an NPR review and the reviewer said that the less you know going into this book the better and I m inclined to agree.This book tonally reminded me of Gone Girl but with many twists and no cheating I was incredibly impressed with Yates ability to create a sustainable mystery from start to finish and never once did I feel like he cheated with a dream sequence or misdirection Everything you need is right in front of you.I had many different theori [...]

Letting go of a bafflingly satisfied sigh I read this book because my bookworm friends told me that it is good I pick it up, and for the first few chapters it has interesting premise Then it got mundane in the middle The need to know the ending was what pushed me to continue reading A quarter towards the end, the plot got very interesting and heartbeating ly suspense, questions were unraveled slowly and I would have to say, some elements really surprises me The ending is, satisfying in a way But [...]

A novel for the turn of the 21st century power, determination and gullibility Chad, an American, arrives at Pitt College, Oxford built in 1620 with requisite Gothic glories of architecture to study for a year, and his first encounter with freshman Jolyon is to have longlasting consequences Chad is desperate to insinuate himself into college life and become part of a clique, to become part of the establishment Under the auspices of Game Soc the two of them are the instigators of what turns out to [...]

I caught the end of a discussion about this book on my local NPR station and was left with the admonition to read it without trying to learn too much about it first Fair enough.One thing I will make clear Mr Yates is a good writer He understands pacing, the use of dialog, settings, all that stuff I imagine that his book might have presented in a different way at first and possibly got dumbed down by an editor seeking mass appeal.Here s how.First 100 pages or so Super Five stars Couldn t wait to [...]

Black Chalk is a dark and twisting tale of friendships stretched to breaking point as the result of a game of dares Six students meet in the first few weeks of university and devise a game which they assume will entertain them during their first year of study, fourteen years later it is still being played and the consequences felt The story is narrated by one of the players who is reflecting back on the start of the game at the point the last round is about to be played and the ultimate winner r [...]