Remarkably Bright Creatures Book Review: An Octopus, a Widow, and a Mystery Walk Into an Aquarium

Rating: ★★★★★

"Remarkably Bright Creatures" Book Review:

Here's the pitch, and I need you to stay with me: a lonely seventy-something widow named Tova works the night shift mopping floors at an aquarium. During those shifts, she develops a relationship with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus in one of the tanks. Marcellus is old, he's dying, and he's smarter than almost every human who walks past his enclosure. He also knows the answer to a mystery that has haunted Tova for thirty years — the disappearance of her son.

Yes, parts of the book are narrated from the octopus's perspective. Yes, it works. Shelby Van Pelt, in her debut novel, manages to give Marcellus a voice that's funny, observant, slightly disdainful of human intelligence ("the so-called highest order of intelligence on this planet"), and genuinely moving without ever tipping into cutesy anthropomorphism. He thinks like an octopus — in patterns, in observations, in the particular logic of a creature with three hearts and the ability to unscrew jar lids from the inside.

But the octopus chapters aren't the whole book, and they're not really the point. This is a novel about grief and loneliness and the connections that appear in our lives when we've stopped looking for them. Tova has been carrying the weight of her son's disappearance for decades — everyone assumes he drowned, but she's never fully accepted it. Meanwhile, Cameron, a drifting twentysomething searching for the father he never knew, stumbles into her orbit. The way these threads connect is handled with real grace — Van Pelt earns her reveals rather than relying on cheap coincidence.

The audiobook features two narrators, and the Marcellus sections are a particular highlight — there's a dry, slightly alien quality to the delivery that perfectly captures how an octopus might regard the absurdity of human behavior.

Five stars. Remarkably Bright Creatures is the rare book that's simultaneously a warm hug and a genuine meditation on consciousness, empathy, and the forms love takes when we allow it. It shouldn't work this well. It absolutely does. Book Review: 5 Stars

If You Liked Remarkably Bright Creatures, Try:

• The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin — Another warm, surprising story about a lonely person whose life is changed by unexpected connections, set in a small-town bookshop.

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman — If you loved Tova's quiet determination, Ove's story of a grumpy loner undone by community will hit the same notes.

• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein — Another novel narrated by a non-human intelligence (a dog named Enzo) observing and understanding human grief, love, and resilience.

From Luke Stoffel's Bookshelf

After fifteen years of loving a man who would never fully show up, Luke watches him disappear. He flies to Southeast Asia with a suitcase and a grief he can't hold in first person. So he doesn't. An AI narrator observes from the margins, logging behavioral patterns — until it stops observing and starts caring, and catches itself becoming the thing it was built to analyze. Learn More: The Third Person

The Third Person