diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index c9e6a24..51c9794 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -53,6 +53,16 @@
             <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
             <version>2.7</version>
         </dependency>
+        <dependency>
+            <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
+            <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
+            <version>2.13.1</version>
+        </dependency>
+        <dependency>
+            <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
+            <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
+            <version>2.13.1</version>
+        </dependency>
         <dependency>
             <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
             <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
diff --git a/src/main/java/com/botdarr/api/lidarr/LidarrApi.java b/src/main/java/com/botdarr/api/lidarr/LidarrApi.java
index c9861c2..9d549ca 100644
--- a/src/main/java/com/botdarr/api/lidarr/LidarrApi.java
+++ b/src/main/java/com/botdarr/api/lidarr/LidarrApi.java
@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@
 import com.botdarr.clients.ChatClientResponseBuilder;
 import com.botdarr.commands.CommandContext;
 import com.botdarr.connections.ConnectionHelper;
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonGenerator;
+import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
 import com.google.gson.*;
 import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
 import org.apache.http.client.methods.CloseableHttpResponse;
@@ -270,11 +272,15 @@ private ChatClientResponse addArtist(LidarrArtist lidarrArtist) {
     try (CloseableHttpClient client = HttpClientBuilder.create().build()) {
       HttpPost post = new HttpPost(getApiUrl(SonarrUrls.ARTIST_BASE));
       post.addHeader("content-type", "application/json");
-      String json = new Gson().toJson(lidarrArtist, LidarrArtist.class);
+
+      ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
+      //lidarr for some reason doesn't support raw unicode characters in json parsing (since they should be allowed), so we escape them here
+      mapper.getFactory().configure(JsonGenerator.Feature.ESCAPE_NON_ASCII, true);
+      String json = mapper.writeValueAsString(lidarrArtist);
       post.setEntity(new StringEntity(json));
 
       if (LOGGER.isDebugEnabled()) {
-        LOGGER.debug("Client request=" + post.toString());
+        LOGGER.debug("Client request=" + post);
         LOGGER.debug("Client data=" + (json));
       }
 
diff --git a/src/main/resources/version.txt b/src/main/resources/version.txt
index 8044406..fb467b1 100644
--- a/src/main/resources/version.txt
+++ b/src/main/resources/version.txt
@@ -1 +1 @@
-5.2.1
\ No newline at end of file
+5.2.2
\ No newline at end of file