Strange Is the Light by Sarah Maria Griffin: A dark fantasy of friendship, betrayal, and consequences

What happens when the games you invented as children turn out to be more real than you ever imagined? In Sarah Maria Griffin’s Strange Is the Light, a childhood game becomes the doorway to something ancient, dangerous, and very much alive—and the friends who created it must finally reckon with the consequences of the last time they played.

Strange Is the Light follows Daphne, Ronan, Leonie, and Finn, four childhood friends whose lives have been intertwined by a strange and somewhat magical summer friendship. Three of them live year-round on the island of Valentia, while Daphne visits only during the summers. At the center of their friendship is a game they have created together, one that begins as the kind of elaborate play-acting children do and gradually evolves into something closer to the role-playing games we know today. They create a world, invent stories and characters, and take turns building the narrative together.

It immediately brought back memories of the games my cousins and I played growing up. We didn’t call them RPGs back then. We just called it playing pretend. My cousins on my mother’s side had our own elaborate version called “Runaway Children,” in which we imagined that we had all run away from home and had to figure out how to survive as a gang of parentless—perhaps more accurately, parent-free—children. I’m not sure what that says about us or our home lives at the time, but we clearly had active imaginations. For Daphne and her friends, however, their game of “Wonder Wonder” becomes something much more consequential.

The group’s nemesis is Arturo, a boy two years older than the others who is friends with Daphne’s older brother—and is every bit as unpleasant as that relationship might suggest. Despite being older and a bully, Arturo is fascinated by the magic the four friends have created and desperately wants to be included in their world. They want absolutely nothing to do with him. Their rejection sends Arturo into a fury, and he vows revenge. Unfortunately for the four friends, Arturo finds an unlikely accomplice in a supernatural entity that inhabits a nearby quarry.

As an adult, Daphne returns to Valentia for a funeral after being away from the island for five years. Although she hasn’t been particularly close with the other three in the intervening years, the moment they are together again, they fall right back into many of their old rhythms. But something about their relationships feels slightly off, and as Daphne tries to make sense of the shifting dynamics between her childhood friends, they are gradually drawn back into Wonder Wonder.

This time, however, Arturo has managed to insert himself into the game as Game Master, turning the beloved childhood game into something far more sinister. Much of the earlier part of the novel hints at what happened during this particular round of the game, but Griffin takes her time revealing the full story. For much of the book, the narrative remains firmly rooted in reality, with only occasional glints of the magical realism that will eventually consume the characters.

Then the story moves forward several years, and the consequences of that final game can no longer be avoided. What happened on the island almost two decades earlier has continued to shape the lives of Daphne, Ronan, Leonie, and Finn, and they are finally forced to confront the debt left behind by their unfinished game.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about Strange Is the Light is how long Griffin allows the story to remain grounded in reality. The earlier sections contain hints that something strange is happening, but for much of the novel, this feels like a story about complicated friendships, old resentments, childhood trauma, and the ways people change—or don’t change—as they grow older. The supernatural elements appear as occasional glints rather than taking over the story.

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That slow build works particularly well because it gives the reader time to become invested in the four friends and their tangled history before throwing them into the strange world of Wonder Wonder. We know something went terribly wrong with that final game, but Griffin makes us wait to discover exactly what happened. And once the game actually begins, Strange Is the Light becomes something very different.

The reader is transported into the world of Wonder Wonder alongside Daphne, Ronan, Leonie, and Finn, and the distinction between reality and imagination begins to blur. Griffin does an excellent job of making that uncertainty part of the experience. We aren’t simply watching characters enter a fantasy world; we’re experiencing a world shaped by their memories, their childhood stories, their fears, and the rules of a game they thought they understood.

Arturo, meanwhile, is delighted by the control he believes he has finally gained over the others. After spending years as the outsider who wasn’t allowed to participate, he has turned the game into an opportunity for revenge. But he has made the mistake of believing that he is the one in control. Because there is something much older living beneath the island. And that ancient entity has its own rules.

This is a very unique and creative story, and Griffin frequently draws the reader so deeply into the magic that it becomes difficult to tell where the game ends and reality begins. The novel’s ideas about childhood imagination, friendship, memory, betrayal, and the stories we create to make sense of ourselves all become tangled together in the increasingly surreal world of Wonder Wonder.

I also enjoyed the way the novel plays with the idea that childhood games can carry much more emotional weight than we realize at the time. When we’re children, the worlds we invent feel enormous and important. The rules matter. The characters matter. The stories matter. We may eventually grow up and dismiss those games as childish things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the experiences disappear. The friendships and conflicts formed within those imaginary worlds can follow us into adulthood. In Strange Is the Light, Griffin takes that idea to its most literal and terrifying extreme.

The result is an atmospheric, inventive novel that blends literary character work, dark fantasy, magical realism, and something approaching horror. It takes its time establishing the relationships between these four friends before gradually opening the door to something much stranger. And once that door opens, there is no guarantee that everyone will make it back through. Because Daphne never took her final turn. And in Wonder Wonder, every debt eventually has to be paid.

Strange Is the Light by Sarah Maria Griffin releases September 8, 2026, and is a particularly good choice for readers who enjoy stories about childhood friendships, invented worlds, complicated adult reunions, and the unsettling possibility that the things we imagined as children might have been real all along. If you like your fantasy strange, atmospheric, and just a little unsettling, this is definitely one to put on your reading list.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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