Clarity

Overview

Clare Fern's ability sets her apart in ways she never asked for: brushing against an object can flood her with images of what its owner has hidden, from petty betrayals to darker acts. When a local teenage girl turns up dead, that gift stops being a private nuisance and becomes something the people around her want to use.

Complicating matters, the request to help comes from an ex-boyfriend Clare would rather avoid, and the case soon circles back toward her own family when her brother, who shares her unusual sensitivity, is named a suspect. She can no longer treat her ability as optional.

Paired with Gabriel, whose father is leading the investigation, Clare works through a web of jealousy, old grudges, and buried desire to find the killer, all while wondering whether her own perception can be trusted when it matters most.

A Mystery Built on Unreliable Sight

Kim Harrington's novel uses its supernatural premise to ask a fairly grounded question: what happens when the person best equipped to uncover the truth is also the least sure she can trust what she's seeing? Clare's visions are fragments, not full certainty, and the novel leans on that uncertainty to generate suspicion that spreads outward from her immediate circle to her own family. The result sits at the intersection of psychic mystery and small-town drama, where everyone has something to hide and Clare's power makes hiding harder.

The book belongs to a wave of YA fiction from its era that paired amateur-sleuth plotting with a paranormal hook, aimed at readers drawn to both crime fiction and speculative premises. Its focus on a teenage protagonist navigating romantic entanglement alongside a criminal investigation places it within a familiar genre lineage, while the ability to "read" objects gives the mystery a distinct mechanic for doling out clues and red herrings.

Why Clarity Has Been Challenged

Objections tend to center on the book's suitability for middle-school-aged readers, with critics arguing that its combination of a murder investigation and romantic tension involving teenage characters is too mature for younger audiences in that range. Reviewers raising concerns have pointed to scenes of physical attraction and innuendo between the teen characters as inappropriate alongside the story's violent subject matter, arguing the two elements compound rather than temper each other for a young readership. The novel's frank handling of jealousy, past infidelity, and suspicion within a murder plot has similarly drawn scrutiny from those who feel it normalizes mature relationship conflict for readers not yet in high school. This combination of romantic candor and violent crime has led to the book being challenged in 1 state and 1 school district represented in this catalog.