Strange Is the Light

by Sarah Maria Griffin

STRANGE IS THE LIGHT follows a passionately entangled group of childhood friends, fractured by the betrayals and secrets kept as they grew into adulthood.

Now, after twenty years, Daphne, Ronan, Leonie and Finn will finally have to face the consequences of cutting their last adventure short--having accidentally opened a rift into a dangerous alternate dimension while playing a mysterious RPG version of their childhood game.

Daphne never took her final turn... And there is a debt that must be paid.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adult

400 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication September 8, 2026

About the author

Sarah Maria Griffin lives in Dublin, Ireland, in a small red brick house by the sea, with her husband and cat. She writes about monsters, growing up, and everything those two things have in common. Her first book, SPARE AND FOUND PARTS, is out now.

Reviews

[Colby · Rating 5 out of 5]

every summer, at the starcade on ireland's valentia island, four children—daphne, ronan, leonie, and finn—sit down at a table and play wonder, wonder, a game of their own invention that serves as an escape from their troubled lives. as they grow together into adulthood, their imaginary world remains a precious secret they can disappear into whenever they please. but after one of their treasured summers turns violent, they realize that growing older means discovering they may have never known one another at all.

years later, in the wake of that pivotal summer, the four friends are invited back to the old starcade for one last game. only this time, nothing is what it seems. the world they left behind has changed in their time away, and each turn they take upends the fabric of reality. there has been something else at the table with them during their sessions, and there is a cosmic debt that needs to be paid, no matter the price.

sarah maria griffin's STRANGE IS THE LIGHT is a masterful exploration of friendship, love, betrayal, loss, and the unique horrors of being alive. imagining myself in these characters' positions—my greatest source of joy poisoned at the source and my dearest friends turned strangers before my eyes—made me nauseous with anxiety, and griffin's stellar prose made each beat of this story hit like a punch to the face. i cried, i laughed, i panicked, and i fell in love with the valentia gang as if i'd grown up with them myself.

visceral, strange, and utterly transporting, STRANGE IS THE LIGHT is a surreal and horrifying love letter to childhood friendship and adulthood hardships that will break your heart and change the way you treat one another. the truth is, there's precious little i want to tell you about this book at the end of the day. the late, great david lynch said that the work itself is the talking, and watching the secrets be revealed here is unbelievably rewarding. i ask you to trust me when i tell you that not a single one of you is ready for what's coming. STRANGE IS THE LIGHT hits shelves this september, and griff—with all her inimitable powers—is just getting started. i hope you'll join her at the table.

(eARC of STRANGE IS THE LIGHT provided by edelweiss+ and netgalley.)

[Áine O'Connell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: for the love of god check the trigger warnings for this one.

Another strange, sticky, magical horror from Sarah Maria Griffin - a writer who is working in a space no-one else is right now, I think. Her worlds are totally unique, and dazzling, and Strange is the Light, her seventh novel, is no exception.

Daphne McSharry is a lonely, quick-tempered townie who finds solace every summer on Valentia Island. Together with her best friends, she finds herself, year after year, throughout her childhood, on this island - until it all comes crashing down in the gang's early twenties. This ambitious novel is set across twenty years, largely in the middle period with our protagonists in their twenties. The winding, slow-burn horror is every bit as human as it is cosmic, and it is the horrors of what humans can do to one another that lingers in the mind long after reading.

Friendship is at the core of this novel; the close bond between Daphne, Ronan, Leonie and Finn is formed across many childhood summers and lasts well into adulthood, but changes, too, curdling into something strange and dark. Forces beyond the gang’s control are manipulating their friendship, sure, but there is also a full and frank exploration of childhood friendships and the changes they go through as you grow up here. Griffin isn’t afraid to show her characters grow and change - often for the worse - as they become adults, and this warping impacts the friendships as much as any supernatural horror.

Strange is the Light is a real slow burn of a novel, meandering its way through plots and relationships in order to give us time to get to know the characters who really matter. Griffin is so, so good at imbuing her novels with a constant sense of unease, so that even the decidedly non-horror parts of this story are unsettling. Daphne, our main POV character, is the one we get to know best - obviously - and she is a ball of rage, righteous and demanding and at times, very very stupid. It’s phenomenal to read a female main character that’s full of anger without the novel hitting you over the head with it - Daphne’s anger is part of a bigger picture, here, not a marketing pull or a whole plot. I loved Daphne, even when I wanted to yell at her. I loved all the characters; they all feel whole and complex, like they could walk out of the pages of the book and ask you for a smoke.

Ambitious, sweeping, dangerous and weird, Strange is the Light is a wondrous novel about how love can create and destroy whole worlds. Sarah remains one of the most fascinating and courageous writers working today.

[Katherine Snow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strange Is The Light puts all other 'weird girl' books to shame by being the weirdest and wildest and angriest 🧿.

I looooove you Daphne, you don't always do things the right way but you are doing the RIGHT thing.

🎣🎣🎣

We follow our protagonist Daphne as she lives out these idyllic summer friendships on the island of Valentia. Her group (Finn, Leonie and Ronan) are a needed escape from her difficult relationship with her brother Daithi and her lacklustre friendships at home.

They develop a pretend game that fills up their summers-- Daphne fills journal after journal with her stories of Wonder Wonder, this game is the table the friends gather around year after year, shedding their regular selves and playing in this imaginary space together.

As they get older, their relationships with one another get more complicated, but these friends are stuck in a kind of stasis that comes from arms-length summer friendships, their ties cast and crystallized in youth, the bridge stretching too long between who they are the rest of the year and who they are in the summer time.

They are catapulted out of this stasis when someone plunders their dream world and forces them to come clean about 'shameful' secrets they are hiding from one another under the guise of a tabletop RPG created from Wonder Wonder.

This novel was well-paced, intriguing, I found myself reading it in snippets while I waited in line because I didn't want to put it down! It has similar eerie, nefarious vibes of Eat the Ones You Love, and a feature from a friend we know and love from that story.

I loved the continued imagery of the eye and the tie ins to Eat the Ones You Love, I see you Sarah Maria Griffin Cinematic Universe (SMGCU?)

So grateful for this ARC, I loved this strange and beautiful book. 5 stars!

Thank you so much to Tor and NetGalley for this ARC!

[K. Hvostova · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book does a phenomenal job at creating a realistic group of summer friends reminiscent of the whole kids on bikes trope you’d find in something like Stranger Things or It. But unlike those stories where the characters fit into tropes, this book does a fantastic job at making everyone feel fully realized. Their dynamics are very complexed and nuanced. You feel the love and the betrayal they feel throughout the course of the story. I really liked Daphne and Ronan. I felt so bad for Leonie and ended up really disliking Finn for things revealed in the plot (like damn kid that’s so messed up).

I also really liked how there was a sense of unease throughout the novel, like something was going to go wrong at some point, or something truly bad was going to happen to the characters. It made me second guess who to trust and what was going on. The books isn’t quite horror, but it does give this sense of foreboding, especially as the plot is slowly unravelled.

Now, while there was a lot to enjoy, this book is a serious slow-burn. We do not get to the RPG elements until like halfway through the novel. And the focus is more on the characters than the plot, so it really isn’t much like Stranger Things or Jumanji where the characters have to escape the world of the game. It’s sorta just there??

And the ending for me was a little bit meh. Like it felt rushed compared to the rest of the book. I liked what the ending meant for the characters and what they must do moving forward. But it kinda felt like the big bad came out of nowhere and everything wrapped up after Daphne’s choice.

If you are looking for a book like Stranger Things, Goonies, It, or Jumanji, you won’t really find it here. The RPG elements take a backseat to everything else, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because everything else is so well done. It’s just not for everyone!

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cover is nice.

I didn't enjoy this book, at all. I found it extremely draggy, and just when I thought it was finally over, part three came along! 50 more pages! I'm not saying it's a bad book for the right reader, but it is full of unlikable characters who are drunk and/or high as often as not, and I didn't enjoy spending that much time in their company. Maybe someone between the ages of 14 and 20 would enjoy this book. More than me, anyway.

I have promised myself that I will read and review any book I request from Netgalley. This one was hard to finish. From the description, it sounded like a book that could be for me - but it was not a book for me. If you don’t want to read about animal violence, it may not be a book for you either. (Animal violence one of the characters kills dogs, for decades, on video so sickos can watch and send him money.) I will not be reading additional books by the author.

I read an advance reader copy of Strange Is the Light from Netgalley.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you've ever had a group of summer friends, you know how important they are to you. And if those summers were spent on an island where you were given virtually free range? Bliss.

Daphne has a strained relationship with her older brother and with the children on the Dublin estate she lives and goes to school with... but those summers, on Valentina Island? She lives for those and for her time with her BFFs. They rove the island, frequently going to an arcade where they've repurposed a table into a map of a world they've created, complete with quests and adventures. It's not really an RPG, in that there are no die or manuals: it's indoor imaginative storytelling. And Daphne feels most alive on the island with these friends.

Until her 15th year, when things start to go wrong. And then, back in Dublin, things go even more wrong. Offered the opportunity to spend time on the island to heal, she again falls in with her childhood friends but, of course, they (and she) have changed. The boy who led to her being banished from the island is now a man who owns that arcade, and he insists the group return and play their game (he's turned it into an actual game, using Daphne's diaries as fodder for the various quests).

No spoilers, but there's a supernatural element and things don't quite go well. Even without that, this is a great look at how our childhood escapes and friends change and morph (almost beyond recognition) as we grow up. And that actions very much have consequences.

eARC provided by publisher via Edelweiss.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars
This is a wonderfully entertaining RPG style speculative fiction romps that gave me Stranger Things vibes. I enjoyed the female friendship at the center of this adventure story. I struggle to classify this book into a category. From the Stranger Things comparisons, it lightly follows some horror tropes but it felt more like a litRPG than the horror I normally read.

I enjoyed the nostalgia this book creates for the summers of our childhood. The references were not too overwhelming but instead focus on the freedom and friendships that were often central to our lives.

I would recommend this novel to those looking for a light adventure story to read this summer.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and the publisher.

This was a fascinating and uncanny story. Rooted in nostalgia. We see a young girl, making friends on the island her family takes her to in the summer. She needs them, as her brother is pretty awful to her and she gets in the crosshairs of him and his equally odious friend. She grows up with these friends, their relationship punctuated by a game they play, and the fantasy world she writes in her journals. We see several summers here until an event occurs that puts her seaside idyllic at risk.

Friendship is absolutely core here. They get tested, some are stronger than others. But there is something beautiful here in those passionate friendships that come in adolescence, where you would do anything for that person.

There’s a villain. I think the author did try to create a bit of balance, aiming not to make them too evil. With some characters trying to defend them. However I found them insidious, entitled, cruel and I had major alarm bells anytime they were on the page. I liked that this book evoked such a strong reaction in me.

This is quite slow burn, and it walks a strange line where it’s not quite horror but it has horror elements. It’s got a core coming of age story, strong friendships. However it’s also peppered with deep grief, uncertainty and a feeling of being out of control.

[Chelsea Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read Eat the Ones You Love last year and quite literally haven't stopped thinking about it ever since. and now, with this newest book, Sarah Maria Griffin has officially become an auto-buy author for me. everything she writes is so... alive. sometimes comfortingly so, but more often eerily & uncomfortably. i had very little idea of what was happening throughout almost the entirety of this book and i loved that. can't wait to see how this is received and to see what Griffin writes next!

[Nicole Laverdure · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointed!

Strange is the Light is a story of betrayal and secrets that follows a group of childhood friends, Daphne, Ronan, Leonie, and Finn, into adulthood, twenty years later.

I wasn't expecting this kind of story when I entered a GoodReads giveaway.

The story is a bit slow to read, especially the first part. After a few chapters, you get used to it. This author is new to me, and her writing style surprised me a little bit. This story didn't hold my attention, which is why I'm giving it three stars.

Thank you to Goodreads and the author for sending me a copy of this book.

[Abigail]

WAKE UP BABE NEW GRIFFIN JUST DROPPED

(I'm so hyped you don't understand)