Review: Afterimage by Naomi Hughes

Afterimage never ceased to surprise me. The plot of the book is all mystery, intrigue, and thrills which only builds to a crescendo at the end.

Summary

Amidst controversy, conspiracy theories, and threats from government officials, Camryn longs for the truth. But the only person who she can turn to is a transparent boy in a lab coat named Quint. Unsure whether he’s a hallucination or a ghost, Camryn has no choice but to trust him as they become embroiled in a plot that is bigger than either of them realize.

In a race where the fabric of time and space is at stake, they must figure out who caused the explosion before the culprit comes back to finish Camryn―and her city―off for good.

Review

(Disclaimer: I received this free book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)

Afterimage is a science fiction book with a lot of heart, intrigue, and a fantastic main character. Camryn has this wonderful resilience in her. She suffers from panic attacks, but she’s able to be the star of her own book. She becomes the main character in a wonderfully written book about ethics and choices.

Afterimage is one of those books where I can’t get over the title. It is so good. Not only does afterimage refer to the process of staring at this one image and seeing behind the white space. It’s like when you remove a picture off the wall and you still see the outline. At the same time it also happens when you stare at the sun. And this metaphor is just perfect for the book.

We look at something so much, have such a clear idea of what it is, that when it’s gone, we realize maybe we never knew it at all.

At the same time, one of themes I adored from the book was about choices and ethics. Afterimages examines the cost of our choices – what would we do if we were in that same position? Would we experiment? Would we stop it? At the same time, we are asked, through a series of events, if we can sacrifice people for ourselves or the greater good.

Afterimage also asks us a quintessential question – can people change? When we act on our fear, can we evolve and do better? Second chances are hard, and so is trusting again, but who knows what could happen. Combined with the title, the excellent writing, and fantastic pacing, Afterimage deals with living with all these shards of ourselves inside of ourselves, the thoughts, the mistakes, the cruelty and we still need to choose more, to be better.

You can find Afterimage on Goodreads, Amazon, Book Depository, and Indiebound.

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