January 2025 Book Club: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre:  Magical Realism, General Fiction
Content: Strong Language

 

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.

 

This isn't my usual type of book, so I'm really surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I loved Marcellus and Tova. An octopus nearing the end of his life, and a woman in her twilight years befriending each other sounds like a very weird type of book, but it worked. This was such a charming and heartwarming story, that had me tearing up near the end. It hit me in the feels in certain ways because of the subject matter of an older person losing a spouse and having to make choices about where to go from there. There were some coincidences in this that could possibly be a problem for some readers, but I just enjoyed the story anyway.

For book club I made a couple of octopus themed refreshments and served shrimp which was a big part of Marcellus's diet in the book.