![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: The Harrowing
Author: Kristen Kiesling
Illustrator: Rye Hickman
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 525,270
Text Number: 1920
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed via Hoopla from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A teen girl discovers she's inherited her mother's ability to sense future killers through hand-to-hand contact, and is shipped off a school to train other Harrows. What a great premise, and the telling is well balanced, troubled home life against budding romance with a likeable love interest against a cozy/ominous boarding school rife with mystery and ethical conundrums and strong supporting characters. Kiesling is willing to get dark, which the premise demands. But this needs another ~100 pages, because the reveals are rushed & neat, the ethics don't fare any better. Minority Report-plots aren't resolved when the system is made a little more forgiving, right, the problem is bigger than that; kidnapping & involuntarily treatment is better for potential killers than indefinite detention or murder, but we can agree it's not super great! So this lets itself down, but I still liked it & would try more by the author.
Author: Kristen Kiesling
Illustrator: Rye Hickman
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 525,270
Text Number: 1920
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed via Hoopla from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A teen girl discovers she's inherited her mother's ability to sense future killers through hand-to-hand contact, and is shipped off a school to train other Harrows. What a great premise, and the telling is well balanced, troubled home life against budding romance with a likeable love interest against a cozy/ominous boarding school rife with mystery and ethical conundrums and strong supporting characters. Kiesling is willing to get dark, which the premise demands. But this needs another ~100 pages, because the reveals are rushed & neat, the ethics don't fare any better. Minority Report-plots aren't resolved when the system is made a little more forgiving, right, the problem is bigger than that; kidnapping & involuntarily treatment is better for potential killers than indefinite detention or murder, but we can agree it's not super great! So this lets itself down, but I still liked it & would try more by the author.
