I didn't know what to expect going into C. J. Tudor's The Chalk Man, but the blurb that described it as a combination of Stranger Things and Stand by Me really grabbed my attention. Sign me up! Tudor totally captured the feel of the 80s in this book, and accomplished this without needing to constantly name-drop video games, movies, musicians, etc. The entire atmosphere simply felt like being a kid in the 80s. One thing that disappointed me about the book: There were a couple of slurs and a racist stereotype of Romani people that caught me off guard. It wasn't revealing anything about a character's biases, it wasn't serving as a relevant supporting detail. It just perpetuated common racist…