Young adult
Grieving her mother’s death, Esme begins to see things no one else can. Diagnosed with mental illness, she fears she’s losing her mind—until a chance meeting leads her to believe her visions may be real. As reality unravels, she’s drawn into a beautiful but dangerous hidden world.
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Consumed with grief after the loss of her mother, Esme begins to see and hear things that others can’t.
Diagnosed with depression and anxiety, she hides her experiences, afraid she’s losing her mind. But everything changes after a session with her psychiatrist leads her to Perkin, a Canadian expat, and his mother, Toni, a reality researcher with unorthodox ideas.
As Esme and Perkin grow closer, she starts to believe her visions might be more than just symptoms – they could be glimpses into hidden layers of reality. Together, they test the boundaries of perception and are drawn into a world as dangerous as it is beautiful, where nothing is quite what it seems.
Here's what readers have to say about this book....
✨💫 A Light From Elsewhere by Harry Allen really crept up on me. Esme is grieving her mum and starts seeing and hearing things she cannot explain. When she is diagnosed with depression and anxiety, she keeps those experiences to herself, worried that admitting them will mean she is losing her mind. That part of the book felt painfully real to me. The way grief blurs reality and makes you doubt your own thoughts was handled with a lot of care. As a nurse who has worked with those at end of life, I resonated so much with the way it was written. I liked how the story opens out slowly. Meeting Perkin and his mother Toni shifts everything. Suddenly there is the possibility that what Esme is experiencing is not illness at all, but something stranger and harder to define. I appreciated that the book never rushes to give neat answers. It lets you sit in the uncertainty alongside Esme. This is a quiet, thoughtful read rather than a dramatic one. It is more about mood and emotion than plot twists, and that worked for me. I finished it feeling a little unsettled but also oddly comforted. It is the kind of book that lingers in your thoughts afterwards. A gentle, strange and moving read for anyone who likes speculative stories grounded in real feeling. Read more at The Secret Book Review.
