The Chalk Man

By: C J Tudor

Narrated by: Andrew Scott, Asa Butterfield

Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor, read by Andrew Scott and Asa Butterfield.

None of us ever agreed on the exact beginning.

Was it when we started drawing the chalk figures, or when they started to appear on their own?

Was it the terrible accident?

Or when they found the first body?

©2017 C. J. Tudor (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"[I] haven't had a sleepless night due to a book for a long time. The Chalk Man changed that. Many congrats C. J. Tudor." (Fiona Barton, best-selling author of The Widow)

"It's been a while since I've read such an impressive debut." (James Oswald, author of the Inspector McLean series)

"Tense, skillful storytelling." (Ali Land, best-selling author of Good Me Bad Me)

"If you like my stuff, you'll like this." (Stephen King)

Great story. 1/2 the narration god awful.

The story is great let’s get that out of the way. The one narrator who does the chapters from flashbacks is great. The man whoever that does the 2016 chapters. Is beyond horrible. I noticed that on some of the reviews before buying people saying the same thing. I’ve never seen such a harsh review be so correct. He is so bad, honestly doesn’t seem like he’s even trying. He mumbles so some words aren’t even understandable. He also whispers for intense moments trying to make it sound creepy but it doesn’t work. They should have just had the one guy do both parts. Duo narrations always are weird but this was bad. I would have just rather bought the book.

The narration was awful.

The guy with the Irish accent was a horrible narrator. I still don’t know he had an Irish accent being from England, or why every other sentence he read trailed off in lazy mumblings.

Ok, but flawed narration

I really don't understand why the producers of this book decided to use an Irish narrator for the 2016 parts. It suggests that Eddie grew up to become Irish, which doesn't make much sense, since he stayed in the same town until the age of 42.

Enjoyable story, performance not so much

Good story, not the kind that would become one of my favourites, but still good. Would recommend the author and the book.
As some other readers already mentioned, the narrator that read 2016 parts was horrible. I did not understand claearly when he started to whisper and it was hard to listen to his parts when I was outside (bummer, as I often listen to audiobooks while I run).

Excellent story

But I will never listen to an Andrew Scott read again, I’m very sorry to say. Some of his reading was barely audible. And some of it was so garbled I missed it. I would pump up the volume and then when Asa came on I would have to turn it down. The whole book was listened to in this way. Remember: you’re reading a book that will be listened to in numerous settings. Amongst those will be noisy places. So being all dramatic with a falsetto type voice is not conducive to those places.

Otherwise,the story was very good and I enjoyed the two voices very much.

Interesting story

The story was quite captivating, with a nice plot twist. Some of the parts strongly resemble Stephen King’s IT story, which I found quite interesting.

I read in some of the reviews that people did not enjoy narration of the book. I have to disagree. I loved Andrew Scott narration and did not have any trouble hearing parts he read in a lower voice or whisper and I listened without headphones at this time.
Audiobook worth listening.

Didn't like

I found the negativity towards Christians and prolife work unfounded and unfair. The narration was ok.