let's say I am using HttpClient w/ serialization, and I want to handle the case of invalid JSON by getting the response text. is that possible, or do I need to receive the response as text and deserialize manually?

Just catch

JsonProcessingException

assuming you're using jackson

i am using kotlinx.serialization

then catch the corresponding error for json deserialization - they are not caught by ktor when calling

receive<T>()

yes, that's quite easy, but how do I get the response text?

with jackson the error has the full response available I think. Perhaps kotlinx.serialization has some info about it as well? What do you want to do with it?

the exception has a character position and what the specific error was, but it does not include the json text