The Deadly Daylight (Ash Harrier, Pantera)
In Ash Harrier’s debut middle-grade novel, The Deadly Daylight, 12-year-old Alice England helps her father dress corpses in the family funeral home. She finds that certain personal objects are ‘resonant’: they allow her to see key moments from a deceased person’s life. One such object leads her to believe that her classmate Violet’s uncle did not, in fact, die of natural causes. With a reluctant Violet in tow, Alice sets out to discover the true circumstances of her uncle’s death. As well as being a charming mystery, The Deadly Daylight also functions as a sweet and gentle lesson in empathy and difference. Both Alice and Violet have a physical disability—Alice’s leg was damaged in utero and Violet is allergic to sunlight—but, refreshingly, Harrier does not approach this as something to be overcome. While their disabilities are central to the girls’ characters, Harrier does not suggest the pair are inspirational for simply living their lives. The girls succeed not because of, or despite, their limitations, but because they are clever and inquisitive; this is disability representation as it should be. The Deadly Daylight is an engaging novel with a full cast of larger-than-life characters, and even I didn’t pick the bad guy! Harrier sets us up nicely for the next book in the series, and readers will be left wanting more.
Hannah Gardiner has been a bookseller since the pre-Titlepage era, and currently works as a book buyer.
