Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt Review: Warmhearted Mystery With an Unforgettable Octopus

At its centre are two narrators with very different perspectives. Tova Sullivan is a recently widowed woman in her seventies who takes a night-shift cleaning job at the Sowell Bay Aquarium and gradually forms a bond with Marcellus, the resident giant Pacific octopus. Marcellus, ancient and sardonic, observes the humans around his tank with a patience and intelligence that the novel frames as entirely genuine. Threading through their growing friendship is the unresolved mystery of Tova's son Erik, who disappeared thirty years earlier under circumstances that have never been fully explained. Into this arrangement arrives Cameron Cassmore, a luckless thirty-year-old teetering on the edge of financial ruin who is also described as possessing a remarkable intellect — and who carries a connection to Tova's past she has yet to discover. The publisher describes the novel as "a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible."

Originally published in May 2022 by Ecco Press, Remarkably Bright Creatures became a New York Times bestseller and a Read With Jenna selection, and it was awarded the 2023 McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize by the Writer's Center — a notable achievement for a debut. Its cultural reach extended further when Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both reported in August 2024 that a Netflix adaptation was in development, directed by Olivia Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing) and starring Sally Field. That level of attention for a first novel signals an unusually wide readership.

Critical praise has centred heavily on the character of Marcellus himself. Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest, called him "one of the most intriguing and satisfying characters I've encountered in fiction in a very long time," and described the novel as managing to be "wry and wise, charming and surprising." Jamie Ford, the New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, praised Van Pelt for creating "a perfect story with imperfect characters" that is "so heartwarming, so mysterious, and so completely absorbing." The Barnes & Noble editorial description frames it as "an ultimately feelgood but deceptively sensitive debut" — noting the balance between lightness and emotional depth. Blurbers and booksellers alike have drawn comparisons to Fredrik Backman, pointing to the novel's character-driven architecture and its reliance on personality quirks, accumulated hurt, and earned emotional payoff.

Not all readers find the construction seamless. One reader at ivereadthis.com observed that the mystery at the novel's heart "doesn't take too much brainpower to solve," with the key revelation disclosed by Marcellus well before the final pages, shifting the reader's attention from plot surprise to emotional aftermath. The same reviewer noted that Marcellus's ability to intuit the needs and desires of humans beyond his tank stretches credulity even within the novel's own logic, and offered the pointed observation that the book "sounds as if it was written to please a writers' group and with more than one eye on a sale to television." Readers who arrive expecting a tightly plotted mystery with a genuinely withheld resolution may find the pacing of discovery front-loaded. The novel's greatest strengths are atmospheric and emotional rather than structural.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is designed for readers who prize feeling over puzzle-solving — those who are drawn to multigenerational stories of loss and quiet reconnection, and who can embrace a non-human narrator without irony. The Backman comparison is a useful shorthand: if the emotional mechanics of A Man Called Ove resonate, Van Pelt's novel occupies similar territory. It is a book about loneliness and the unlikely forms that connection can take, anchored by a protagonist in Tova whose grief is rendered with evident care, and by an octopus whose interiority Van Pelt uses to illuminate the human figures around him. The 2025 reissue from Ecco — available in paperback — brings the novel to new readers ahead of its Netflix adaptation, making this an apt moment to encounter it for the first time.