Overview

""What stayed with me most is the emotional honesty at the heart of the story ... I admire how you trust young readers to engage with complex realities, faith, identity, injustice, climate anxiety, without simplifying them or offering easy resolutions. That kind of respect for the reader stays with people long after the final page."" -Susanna Clarke, author of Piranesi. At the edge of adulthood, three best friends must face their deepest fears or stand to lose all they hold dear. Hashim has spent his life balancing faith, family loyalty, and the quiet parts of himself he's never dared to name. But when an arranged marriage threatens to decide his future for him, silence is no longer an option. Choosing honesty could cost him his family, And the sense of belonging he's always clung to. Alex fears being left behind as the world shifts beneath their feet. Maryam refuses to stay quiet in the face of injustice, even when standing up comes at a personal cost. As intolerance grows and political inaction puts their generation's future at risk, their friendship is tested in ways they never expected. Set against the fragile moment after graduation, when the future feels both wide open and terrifying, The Rise Up Trilogy is a powerful coming-of-age story about identity, courage, and friendship under pressure. Inspirational, intense, and deeply moving, this is a story for readers who believe that telling the truth still matters

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9789526516004

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Reviews

What stayed with me most is the emotional honesty at the heart of the story, especially the way you handle friendship under pressure. The quiet moments between Hashim, Alex, and Maryam feel just as powerful as the larger social conflicts surrounding them. Hashim's struggle between faith, family loyalty, and his truth is written with great sensitivity. The tension around the arranged marriage, and the fear of losing both love and belonging, felt painfully real. I was also struck by how you gave Alex and Maryam their own fully realised inner lives, Alex's fear of being left behind, and Maryam's activism and moral clarity, add real balance and depth to the trio. Together, their story captures that fragile moment after graduation when the future feels wide open and terrifying at the same time. I admire how you trust young readers to engage with complex realities, faith, identity, injustice, climate anxiety, without simplifying them or offering easy resolutions. That kind of respect for the reader stays with people long after the final page. Susanna Clarke, author of Piranesi.

Author Information

As a child, Henrik devoured stories of faraway lands. Through them, he discovered that the pathway to understanding people from different cultures was to look for things they had in common rather than what set them apart. Finding connection to people became his passion. In his early teens, he left his safe little bubble in Helsinki and ventured out to the great big world, eventually landing in Paris. At the age of twenty one, Henrik returned to Finland and enrolled in the Helsinki Business School. Two years later he founded a contemporary art sale and services company, but despite the initial success he had to close down the business after five years when the whole western world fell into a deep recession. Henrik decided to go back to school to study philosophy. One morning as he was working on an essay on rhetoric, it dawned on him that he was actually writing his first book. It was a philosophical study into his own coming-of-age. End of Restlessness was published by a Finnish publisher (WSOY) and after publishing another book, this time a young adult novel, he switched to English.The Rise Up Trilogy was inspired by his fifteen-year stint as a volunteer in Helsinki Red Cross Youth Shelter. In a world that is turning into an increasingly hostile place for any minority, what people need is stories that evoke diversity, friendship, human decency, and the courage to listen to one's heart. Besides his husband, Henrik loves novels in Russian about the Soviet life, French pop, snowboarding, sampling vegan delights across the world, and spending time with their brazen, eclectic group of friends and family. For more information, go to henrikwilenius.com, or to Instagram @henrikwilenius or to TikTok @henrikwileniusauthor.

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