04/15/2026
Just here to say.....I really enjoyed this book and I cannot wait for the netflix movie. ( I did listen to it and loved the character connections)
A friend texted me at 11 PM: "Read this. Don't ask questions. Just trust me." Two days later, I was sobbing into my pillow at 1 AM, sending her a voice memo that was mostly unintelligible and ended with "I LOVE THE OCTOPUS."
She was right. I should have trusted her sooner.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel. It is also: a Read with Jenna Today Show pick, an instant New York Times bestseller, a book that has sold over two million copies, and the winner of the 2023 Heartland Prize for Fiction . But none of that matters. What matters is that somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, there is a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus who is about to wreck your entire emotional foundation.
The setup is deceptively simple:
Tova Sullivan is seventy years old. She works the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and cleaning tanks, not because she needs the money but because keeping busy has been her survival strategy since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, vanished from a boat in Puget Sound thirty years ago . Her husband died a few years back. She is, in every way that matters, alone. She has her routines, her crossword puzzles, and a group of friends called the Knit-Wits who meet weekly to gossip and support each other . But grief doesn't care about routines.
Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus who has spent 1,299 days in captivity . He is nearing the end of his four-year lifespan. He is also brilliant, observant, and deeply unimpressed with humans. ("For the most part, you are dull and blundering," he informs us early on .) He spends his nights escaping his tank, stealing shiny objects, and sneaking into other exhibits to snack on forbidden sea life. He has no interest in helping anyone.
Until Tova saves his life one night when he gets tangled in electrical cords .
A friendship forms. Not the kind with conversation, he's an octopus, after all. But the kind that happens in silence: visits at the tank, gentle words, a hand pressed against the glass. Marcellus notices things about Tova. He notices the hole in her heart. And he decides, in his own quiet, eight-armed way, to do something about it.
Cameron Cassmore is thirty years old, unemployed, and drifting through life with the emotional maturity of a teenager who never quite grew up . He was abandoned by his mother at nine, never knew his father, and has been nursing a simmering resentment ever since. When his aunt gives him a box of his mother's belongings containing clues about his father's identity, he hops on a plane to Washington state, convinced that the man he thinks is his father—a wealthy real estate tycoon—will be so overcome with guilt that he'll hand over a fortune .
Spoiler: he doesn't.
Instead, Cameron ends up in the small town of Sowell Bay, working at the aquarium, crossing paths with Tova, and becoming an unwitting piece in a puzzle that Marcellus has already solved.
The novel alternates between these three perspectives, Tova's quiet grief, Cameron's stumbling self-destruction, and Marcellus's witty, weary observations . And slowly, like a tide coming in, the connections reveal themselves.
Let me be direct: Marcellus is the best character I have encountered in years.
He is not anthropomorphized in the way animal narrators often are. He does not think like a human. He thinks like an octopus, curious, tactical, slightly alien. He hoards stolen treasures: a watch, a ring, a keychain . He has three hearts and blue blood and a body that can squeeze through any opening larger than his beak. He is, objectively, a weird little creature.
And he is also wise. Not in a preachy, fortune-cookie way. In a way that feels earned. He has spent his entire captivity watching humans through glass, and he understands them better than they understand themselves.
Read this book.
Bring tissues.
And when you finish, call someone you love. Even if you haven't spoken in years. Especially if you haven't spoken in years.
Marcellus would want you to.
BOOK: https://amzn.to/3NXxwJt
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