Go Home, Afton
by: Brent Jones
Genre: Thriller
Series: Afton Morrison, Book 1
Release Date: June 25, 2018
Blurb
We all wear masks, and Afton Morrison is no exception.
A small-town librarian with a dark side, Afton, twenty-six, has suppressed violent impulses her entire adult life. Impulses that demand she commit murder.
Blending her urges with reason, Afton stalks a known sexual predator, intending to kill him. But her plan, inspired by true crime and hatched with meticulous care, is interrupted by a mysterious figure from her past. A dangerous man that lurks in the shadows, watching, threatening to turn the huntress into the hunted.
Go Home, Afton is the first of four parts in a new serial thriller by author Brent Jones. Packed with grit and action, The Afton Morrison Series delves into a world of moral ambiguity, delivering audiences an unlikely heroine in the form of a disturbed vigilante murderess.
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Review
Go Home, Afton is the first novella of a series written by Brent Jones. As with most stories structured to be in multiple books, there is a certain continuity and character building as well as environment building required. Perhaps the part I can’t get past with this decision is really why structure it as a novella instead of just an entire book? However, those are the author’s decisions but personally, as with most novels like this, it falls into a trap of being the setup phase. We get a lot of setup with really not a lot going on. I’m not saying nothing goes on because the redeeming quality which is the center of this story is the character of Afton Morrison and her development. She is a complex character to say the least with different sides of her that we learn about and she sits in a gray area of right and wrong both for Afton and the situation she encounters or at least gets involved in.
Its a novella and a thriller so its a fairly quick read. As a thriller, it did have some nice descriptions to help with the imagery. Some creepy characters which makes us wonder on what is real and what is just a part of the imagination. As we learn more about Afton, we get to feel the tension as her situation gets more complicated. It builds well-structured thriller moments. The writing style here is refined as well to easily feel immersed into the story. The ideas presented in the structure have a lot to love especially as there are some psychologically thrilling moments (and I’m a sucker for psychological thrillers).
Overall, Go Home Afton as a first part in a series has its good and bad. Good is the detail and the ideas and the sum of its parts coming together to make this a fun read. It gives it the time to really draw out Afton to have many layers to discover in her character. However, the downside of this is that there is the whole issue of certain parts being drawn out and the pacing not being as tight-knit as it should be to keep it a page-turner. First parts with deep characters usually need the first part for set-up and part of me felt like nothing incredibly substantial or surprising happened so while it had some thrilling and tense moments, it still fell short.
On a side note, I’m hoping this means that book 2 can get the ball rolling right away and the thrills and pacing will be a lot better.
Goodreads rating: 3 out of 5
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About the Author
From bad checks to bathroom graffiti, Brent Jones has always been drawn to writing. He won a national creative writing competition at the age of fourteen, although he can’t recall what the story was about. Seventeen years later, he gave up his career to pursue creative writing full-time.
Jones writes from his home in Fort Erie, Canada. He’s happily married, a bearded cyclist, a mediocre guitarist, and the proud owner of two dogs with a God complex.
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Thanks Kim! Very insightful review!
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Hi Kim,
Thanks for the thoughtful review.
“Perhaps the part I can’t get past with this decision is really why structure it as a novella instead of just an entire book?”
Assuming your question wasn’t rhetorical, I’d be happy to answer it for you. There were a few reasons for this.
The first reason, which you touched on, has to do with the structure of the overall story. In total, the complete Afton Morrison series will be in the ballpark of 160,000 words, and I will be releasing it as a complete four-part novel later this year in print, audio, and eBook formats. The story is, however, told in four distinct parts. From a structural perspective, each of these parts is, in some ways, its own story, with its own sub-plots, and its own three-arc structure. Writing the book as one continuous novel (rather than in parts) would’ve, I felt, meant meandering to many different sub-plots (twists and turns, rises and falls) in one single book.
The second reason, as you probably guessed, has more to do with marketing than anything else. I’m a relatively unknown author. It’s fairly easy for me to convince someone to spend 99 cents on the first part in a serial thriller—a short part, at that—and then if she or he likes it, consider purchasing the remaining three parts at $2.99 each. That gives the reader a 160,000-word serial novel for a very reasonable $9.96. But asking someone to spend $9.99 upfront on a fairly lengthy book by an author they’ve never heard of would be a bit of an uphill battle.
Thanks for reading Go Home, Afton thanks for your praise of the characters and my writing style.
Best wishes,
Brent
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Hi Brent! Thanks for clarifying that for me. I can understand your standpoint in choosing this route and I completely respect it. I honestly think you have something with Afton Morrison and look forward to checking out the remaining parts. 🙂
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Hi Kim,
I put together something fun this morning, and I thought you and your followers might like to check out.
It’s an online poll, in which you can vote for who you would choose to play Afton Morrison in a film adaptation of Go Home, Afton.
You can check it out here, if you’d like to. Voting is free, it only takes a second, there’s no sign-up required, and I narrowed the poll down to four choices just to keep things simple.
I hope you’re having an awesome day,
—Brent
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