Go Home, Afton
Author: Brent Jones
Length: Novella
Genre: Thriller
Series: Afton Morrison, Book 1
Release Date: June 25, 2018
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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Wow, what an amazing ‘hit it and quit it’ kind of novella! From the first chapter I was already hooked! Think about it like an unique female version of Dexter Morgan, how can you go wrong? The story had me hooked and I devoured the whole book in one setting. After reading some books that I am way past the due date of being reviewed that were triggering and some that were just blah, this story was a breath of psychopathic fresh air!
I admittedly can relate to Afton in some ways like having more than one version of “myself” not the whole murderous vigilante type of way but hey, different strokes, different folks. As a large amount of my close friends/followers know, I battle Dissociative Identity Disorder and it is a harsh battle. If this is new news you can find my post where I opened up about it at https://touchmyspinebookreviews.com/2018/01/10/fractured-mind-of-a-broken-child/ Like Afton, some very bad things happened to me that should never happen to anyone and have had multiple sides of my selves since the age of 7. Most of the times, I get triggered by books that start out with a character that nobody knows what’s going on with her and I spot it from page 1 but this book had a unique and fantastic approach. Brent Jones depicts mental illness so well and the characterization is quite impressive! I have never been able to read books from someone else with D.I.D perspective but this was truly a fantastic book and makes me feel more of a drive to work on my thriller book that will be based off a true story. This novella had one helluva story line as well, most of the time when reading a novella you feel like you are missing out on something or it doesn’t give you enough enjoyment because of its length but that was not the case with Go Home, Afton! This story was “Wham Bam, Thank you, ma’am” kind of fun! I would definitely recommend this story to anyone looking for a good read that can be read in a couple sittings and you can’t beat a great read for 99 cents! You can grab a copy if interested with the buttons above! I am so excited about reading the second novel and I can’t wait to see what Mr. Jones comes out with next! I couldn’t give this story more praise or recommend it enough. Easily one of the best books I’ve read this year!
“Someone was creeping in the shadows. A man, perhaps, watching me while standing next to a wooden bench at the edge of the street, concealed in part by a decorative lamppost. And all at once, I could feel it. The prying eyes of a fellow voyeur, keen to assess my intentions as much as observe my actions. But as I gave my head a soft shake, the figure disappeared, and I was almost alone again.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 1)
“I hadn’t experienced true autonomy over my consciousness since adolescence. Well, seventeen or so, to be exact. A second Afton emerged that year. A twin sister of sorts, a manifestation of my darkest desires. A relentless cheerleader, in a manner of speaking, who appeared only to me, urging me to obey impulses that most good people can suppress or ignore. I had named her ‘Animus’ Afton, and the time to give in to her was drawing nearer.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 1)
“Kenneth Pritchard had to die, you see—she and I agreed on that much—but it would be me who would have to kill him. He would be my first, and his death had to be just right.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 1)
“There was nothing on my desk but a plastic canister of Lysol wipes. Not a framed photograph, not a placard, not a pen or a pencil, not so much as an artificial fucking ficus. My belongings, sparse as they were—lens cleaner for my glasses, an extra cable to charge my phone—were filed away in a two-drawer cabinet next to my feet. I took a moment, as my single computer monitor flickered on, to savor the beautiful synthetic scent of lemon disinfectant. No, not all librarians were meticulous creatures, but I was, and it felt soothing, reassuring.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 4)
“When I left for college…I swore I’d never come back. But it was that last year before I left, when I was seventeen, that cemented my roots in this town. That gave me a sense of belonging here. The incident, as I had labeled it in my head, in a strictly euphemistic sense. More like scarring, perhaps, or what some might call Stockholm syndrome. Somewhere inside, I harbored this crazy notion that returning to Wakefield might help me find a lost fragment of my soul. Closure, wherever it was buried.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 5)
“…a thin line of red trickled down his throat. Even seated as he was, he towered over me. He looked down his nose through widened gray eyes, waiting to see what I’d do next.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 6)
“Thousands of memories came flooding back through my consciousness at once, each one an image I had fought like hell to forever banish from my psyche. Demons, that had laid in wait, were seething at my core, and came breaking to the surface in flashes of white-hot anger, rushing to my head and neck.” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 11)
“I debated my next move, chastising myself for allowing fear to creep into my consciousness. I hadn’t come this far to turn around and go back…” —Go Home, Afton (Chapter 15)
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.
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads | Brent Jones
Excerpt (Chapter 3)
*Note: When copying this excerpt to your blog—please be careful to leave formatting intact, including use of italics, em dashes, and ellipses.
Parents—stay-at-home moms, mostly—brought in their toddlers once a week so I could read them a story. And I use the word toddlers loosely. Kids as old as six or seven sometimes attended during the summer. And the stories we would read were made up of fewer than fifty words, for the most part. A lot of the mothers in Wakefield were too lazy to read to their own children, I guess.
Oh, and crafts, too. After reading a story together, we’d break out glitter and colored pencils and paste and other nonsense, but that wasn’t the real reason a dozen women turned out with their little monsters each week. Storytime was an excuse for the mothers to gather and gossip. It always took a little while to get the children to settle down, sure. I’d press my finger to my lips and wait. Five or ten seconds at most, although I would have been happy to wait longer. Their mothers, on the other hand, were so much worse. Getting them to shut their fucking traps was a whole separate exercise in endurance.
But as much as I disliked children, there was something magical about them. It was their inability to see gray, I think. Their entire worlds existed in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. You could see it in their faces as a story unfolded, rife with nervous energy at every inconsequential turn.
“And she just doesn’t know”—I read to the room, pointing to each gigantic word—“should she stay, should she go?”
I caught a boy’s expression, who sat just inches from me. The hippopotamus in our story was faced with a dilemma, and this boy was transfixed. His eyes were wide, his hands were cupped over his mouth, and he was vibrating with anticipation to see what the hippo would do next.
I flipped to the last page. “But yes the hippopotamus.”
The boy relaxed a little, making a deliberate show of letting his shoulders drop. A talented drama queen in the making. He was new to storytime and looked to be about five or six years old. He had dark hair, a tan complexion, and a missing front tooth. He’d attended just once before and he’d sat close that day, as well. I’d never really been big on learning children’s names, to be honest, but I knew his was Neil only because he’d come to the library alone both times. It sounds strange, I’m sure, but having a parent use the library as a free babysitting service happens more often than most people would guess.
I continued on, reading the final words of the story. “But not the armadillo.”
Neil was stressed all over again, and his tiny hand shot up. “Miss Afton?”
“Yes, ah, Neil? What is it, little man?”
“How come not the arma-darma?”
“Armadillo.” A woman in baggy gray sweatpants corrected him from the back of the room. She was a few years older than me, had bleach-blonde hair in a ponytail, and her voice resembled a seagull getting crushed by a car.
I shut the book and set it on my lap. “That’s a good question, Neil.” I bit my lower lip, deciding how much to share. “Well, let’s see. Ah, no one likes armadillos, for starters. They’re bullet-proof, if you can believe it, and ugly as sin. They carry leprosy, too, but they don’t bite children too often.”
The woman at the back of the room—Sweatpants, let’s call her—looked horrified. Her stained teeth chattered and she blinked in rapid succession. She placed her palms over her daughter’s ears, a girl around three or four in age.
Neil scratched his head. “What’s a lepra-she?”
“It’s—”
Sweatpants raised her hand to silence me—not that I minded—and looked to a few of the other mothers in the room for support, most of whom were checked out or occupied with their phones. She looked back at me again, then at her daughter. “It’s when good little boys and girls get ice cream.” That wasn’t how I might have defined the word, however. “You want to stop for ice cream on the way home, Jessi?”
It was hard enough getting these little turds to sit still for all fourteen pages of But Not the Hippopotamus. Why on earth would this woman want to stuff her daughter’s face with sugar before lunch? But the girl jumped up and squealed at the mention of sweets, and soon, other kids joined in, as did their mothers.
I peeked down at Neil to see him cradling his head in his hands, masking a look of disappointment by staring at the floor. It appeared he had forgotten all about armadillos and leprosy and storytime, and now sulked, wishing he had a parent present to take him for ice cream like the other children.
The mothers talked amongst themselves, and their toddlers fed on the elevated energy levels. The room was alive with discourse, and I wondered if the local Dairy Queen might consider paying me a small commission. “Well, that’s it for storytime, boys and girls. Thanks for coming.”
Sweatpants spoke up at the back of the room, the self-elected leader of Wakefield’s fattest and frumpiest. “But it’s only quarter past, Afton. Isn’t storytime supposed to be a full hour?”
“Just figured you were all on your way to get a double-scoop of leprosy.”
“Very funny.”
I raised my hands in a gesture of mock uncertainty. “We’ve got crafts we can do.” I pointed to three short tables covered in plastic, adorned with supplies that Kim had set up for us. “Should we get to it?”
“That won’t take long. Couldn’t you read them another story first?”
Couldn’t I read them another story? It’d been her idea to squeeze out one of these little nightmares. Why was I being punished for it? “Not this week, I’m afraid. Sorry.”
But she just wouldn’t give up. “Afton, do you know where Jessi’s daddy is right now?”
My first thought was that her husband was probably fucking her sister at some roadside motel with hourly rates, bed bugs, and a one-star rating on Trip Advisor. I couldn’t say that out loud, of course, and so I fought like hell to keep a smirk off my face. It helped to keep my sights trained on Jessi, who had sat back down, cross-legged in a checkered dress. She was drawing on the floor with one small finger.
Sweatpants answered her own question. “He’s at work, Afton. And he works hard, by the way, and we pay more than our share of taxes in this town. Taxes that pay your salary.”
Oh, the salary card. How I loved it when disgruntled parents brought up my salary, as if any one of them wanted to trade places with me. Yes, her taxes paid me a small fortune. That’s why I rented a one-bedroom apartment in a triplex. And it’s the same reason I drove a seven-year-old Corolla. I was so grateful—indebted, even—to Sweatpants and her husband that I just couldn’t wait to read another story.
“Sure thing.” I grabbed a second book off the pile next to me. “One more story, coming right up.”
Sweatpants smiled. It was a flat, fake smile, of course, the kind where the mouth curls tight but the eyes are dormant. It was about the best I could have hoped for, and it seemed to have a calming effect on the other mothers. They quieted down, eager to return to their various text message conversations.
I pointed my finger to more jumbo text on a colorful page. A story about an overweight and diabetic caterpillar with impulse control issues, who was always so very very fucking hungry. “In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf . . .”
And I couldn’t help but lose myself in thought. I was that little egg on a leaf, glimmering in the moonlight, and about to hatch. Soon after, the morning would come. And my hunger would be satiated at last, because Kenneth Pritchard would be dead.
Schedule
June 25th
Reads & Reels (Review) http://www.readsandreels.com
Book Wonderland (Review) https://bookwonderlandweb.wordpress.com/
Down the Rabbit Hole (Review) http://meggydowntherabbithole.wordpress.com/
Touch My Spine Book Reviews (Review) https://touchmyspinebookreviews.com
June 26th
Book Dragon Girl (Review) http://www.bookdragongirl.com
Jessica Rachow (Review) http://jessicarachow.wordpress.com
Sinfully Wicked Book Reviews (Review) https://sinfullywickedbookreviews.com
The Scribblings (Review) https://thescribblingssite.wordpress.com
June 27th
On the Shelf Reviews (Review) https://ontheshelfreviews.wordpress.com
Tranquil Dreams (Review) http://klling.wordpress.com
June 28th
Dash Fan Book Reviews (Review) https://dashfan81.blogspot.com
J Bronder Book Reviews (Review) http://jbronderbookreviews.wordpress.com/
Just 4 My Books (Review) http://www.just4mybooks.wordpress.com
Life at 17 (Review) https://lifeat17.wordpress.com
June 29th
Kim Knight (Review) http://kimknightauthor.wordpress.com
Misty’s Book Space (Review) http://mistysbookspace.wordpress.com
Port Jerricho (Review) http://www.aislynndmerricksson.com
Thanks so much for checking out my review, loves! I am so sorry I haven’t been spamming up your notifications as of late. My mom got married this weekend and I was the maid of honor and had those duties. I also had to stop one of my medications so haven’t been feeling the best but now that the wedding mess is over I can bloggy hop! Woot! I missed your faces and can’t wait to read your posts. Thanks for reading my review of this great book! I have many to catch up on and unfortunatly some reads were not as great. I hope everyone has a fantabulous week! You guys rock!
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