Black Chalk

I enjoyed reading this story! The plot twists kept me guessing, Yates created a world that had a lot of detail to get lost in, which is something i enjoy with novels. The idea of secret societies were always in the backdrop and the characters were well flushed out. What kept me from giving this novel 5 stars is that I wanted to know more. Secret societies are secret for a reason but the ending wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped and I must admit I was hoping for a different end for our main character. I feel like some story lines along the way were purposefully deceptive such as the visitor's hair color changes, and some of the misdirections were more confusing than useful to further the plot. But overall, I enjoyed this novel a great deal and look forward to reading more from the author.

I am a major sucker for books like Black Chalk, and by that I mean books that center around a group of friends at a college or boarding school that become involved in some secret club or game or something oddly unnerving and mysterious - something that just expels mystery and darkness and secrets, whether in an overtly obvious or hidden manner. Black Chalk did this perfectly.In Black Chalk, six Oxford University college students decide to create a game for the them to play. This is not just any game, however, for this game has high stakes and high money attached to it; it is, quite simply, a game of consequences. These consequences, of course, range from the mild to the extreme and are meant to be more psychologically difficult than physically challenging or any other manner.Black Chalk is written in alternating viewpoints and is divided up quite intricately; some sections are written in a form of third-person narration, while others are first person, though I won't say who the first person narrator is because this is a rather vital part of the book. Because of this, actually, I'm going to try to keep key plot points and summaries of Black Chalk to a minimum, because honestly, just about every aspect of this book is important to the story, and half of the entertainment and thrill value is in reading along and discovering the various secrets and hidden meanings delicately placed throughout.That being said, Yates has a very distinct writing style. At times, it is elegant and free-flowing with breathtaking sentences and deep musings. Other times, it is abrupt and sharp in order to match the current tone or setting of the story. However, these two styles are written in such a way that everything flows in a smooth and effortless manner as a result. There are almost constant twists and turns throughout the story that definitely kept me on my toes and increased my enjoyment immensely simply because most of them were sincerely surprising and unexpected. There were many times where one little sentence would be uttered, or one thing would be explained and I would have a mental (or verbal) "ah-ha" moment and sit back, smile slightly to myself, and shake my head as I tried to work out this complex story.Yates' characters are all wonderfully vibrant and quirky, and each one harbors deeper personalities than they let on. We have Chad, an American student studying abroad; Jolyon, a quick-witted and charismatic young man; Jack, a humorous-to-the-point-of-offense friend; Mark, a perpetually sleepy friend; Dee, an eccentric young woman that vows to commit suicide once she has written her five hundredth poem; and lastly, Emilia, the studious and most innocent of the lot who attempts to keep everyone in line. Together, this cast of characters makes for hilarious and witty dialogue, of which Yates give us plenty of material. If it weren't for how charming and sophisticated the dialogue is between these friends, I might have gotten annoyed by the sheer quantity of it at various points in the novels. However, Yates' sharp tongue - or pen, rather - keeps it lively and a thrill to read. These characters also provide an abundance of emotion and drama as a result of such strong-willed characters.Overall, I am giving Black Chalk five stars and will be adding it to both my favorites shelf on Goodreads. I found Black Chalk extremely hard to put down, and it allowed me to delve back into those feelings I experienced while reading The Secret History and A Separate Peace. I really cannot recommend it enough.

“Black Chalk” is an okay novel, but I don’t think it would be worth rereading at some later point. I certainly did not find it to be as clever as some reviews of it would have you believe.First off, the book has been labeled a “thriller” and maybe there are a few moments where psychologically it is one, but overall I would not label this text as such. I found that the novel rarely held my attention for more than 10-15 pages at a time, and thus even for a short book it is not a quick read. There are moments of foreshadowing that happen at the end of every few chapters and they are very heavy handed. However, they do create an atmosphere for the text and the world inside the narrator’s mind, so I did not mind them as much as I would normally.The author, Christopher J. Yates, creates some nice moments in the text. There is the occasional line that does an excellent job of capturing some essence of friendship. And there are many interesting ideas and relationships presented in the story. But this leads to the novel’s biggest disappointment in that they are never developed or explored and so they are just plopped in and then go nowhere.I read “Black Chalk” for a book club and interestingly all of our thoughts on it followed the same pattern. It was not me, it was the book. I wish it had been more enjoyable to read, but it wasn’t.

I really like the way of Story telling, where there is a regular shift from past into present events.I felt it needed some time to get invested, but then it was a really capturing story.Although the end was not predictable at all, which I love, I was kinda unhappy with it, it all felt a bit unresolved to me.

Well-written, engaging, intelligent psychological mystery/thriller. Great story, beautifully executed. Thoroughly recommend.

This book was a gift, I could barely put it down. Flawlessly written it is an excellent piece of literature

Whenever I read a book about some students playing a game that goes wrong I am, inevitably, immediately taken back to Donna Tartt and the Secret History. And all of the others - including this one - fall short of that hugely enjoyable book. But this is pretty good. Don't want to go into too much detail but it's about students playing a game that, yes, gets out of hand and, yes, goes wrong. Some of the bits that follow aren't altogether convincing (not sure the people behind it all would really be that behind it all, and I was never really clear where the odd behaviour of one character came from) But whilst I was reading it I was willing to ignore most of that, so that counts for somethingEnjoyable fun,

This is a strange book with some good ideas, and yet fatally flawed. A group of six Oxford students get together and invent a game where forfeits are given out for each lost round, and anyone who refuses to do their forfeit is out of the game (and a loss of their £1000 deposit). At the same time, we have the mystery of the Game Soc, three students who agree to part-fund the game, but who otherwise remain unknowns to the friends who are playing.It could have been a good, if slightly trashy, thriller, but the author instead takes us on a different path entirely. The book switches back and forth between the "present" and the game that took place when the friends were students, and it attempts to be a rather worthy read in the style of Donna Tartt's The Secret History or the equally wonderful The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. But there are two issues here: the writing isn't good enough to carry that ambition, and the book becomes boring.As the severity of the forfeits grow with each round, we fall more out of love with the characters. From the outset, the friends state that they don't want the forfeits to be of the typical "run naked down the street" variety, but to be somewhat more personally humiliating or even cruel. But, all the same, the book is in desperate need of some people running naked down the street. At no point are we made to feel that the game is fun or bringing any joy, and this becomes an oddly joyless book because of that. I don't agree with some of the other reviewers who state the characters are cut-outs, but they become very dull.And this is all a great shame, because the basic idea is good, but it's realised in way that just isn't very entertaining. You feel like the author should have just gone with the trashy sexy thriller route rather than trying to write something more serious. What's more, the last fifty pages are pretty anticlimactic, and one of the big mysteries throughout the book isn't even answered.In short: illusions of grandeur on the part of the author have resulted in a dull and often monotonous read that should have been sharp, witty, sexy and fun.