httparty: httparty 0.15.2: incompatible encoding regexp match

Hi folks, I use httparty to interact with an API and I upgraded from v 0.14.x to v0.15.2. Now I’m getting the following error:

Encoding::CompatibilityError: incompatible encoding regexp match (UTF-8 regexp with ASCII-8BIT string)`
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/parser.rb:120:in `gsub'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/parser.rb:120:in `json'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/parser.rb:140:in `parse_supported_format'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/parser.rb:105:in `parse'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/parser.rb:67:in `call'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/request.rb:383:in `parse_response'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/request.rb:351:in `block in handle_response'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/response.rb:25:in `parsed_response'
    from /home/app/bundle/gems/httparty-0.15.2/lib/httparty/response.rb:88:in `method_missing'

Environment details: RubyOnRails 5.0.3 Ruby 2.3.3 Character encoding of API response is UTF-8 (checked in chrome developer tools with document.characterSet)