Follow the Assassin’s Heart

White Bear Lake resident publishes her debut novel.

Sarah Ahiers’ debut novel Assassin’s Heart is a bit different from your typical young-adult fiction read. In the story, a teenage assassin sets out on a path of vengeance for her murdered family. Ahiers wrote the novel in two months spread out over two years, followed by one year of slow revision before HarperTeen published it in February 2016. While writing, Ahiers tried to approach the protagonist’s loss from a different angle. “I wanted to write a novel where the grief not only stayed, but it changed the character,” she says. Assassin’s Heart is available at Barnes & Noble and other major retailers.