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This is a book guide for Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
Publication date: April 29, 2025
Publisher: Ecco
Print length: 384 pages
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Book description:
A charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus
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.
About the author:
When Shelby Van Pelt isn’t writing, she’s herding cats and wrangling children. Her debut novel, REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES (Ecco, 2022) was an Instant New York Times Bestseller and a Read With Jenna Today Show book club pick. In 2023, she was awarded the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the McLaughlin-Esstman-Stearns First Novel Prize from The Writer’s Center. Remarkably Bright Creatures has sold over two million copies. It has spent, in aggregate, over a year on the NYT Hardcover Bestseller list.
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, she’s now missing the mountains in the Chicago area with her family.
You can find out more about her on her website here.
Find all of Shelby Van Pelt’s books here
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