Book Review: Remarkably Bright Creatures

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book came highly recommend to me by more than one person. It’s no secret that I love and admire octopus, so I know now why those recommendations came to me.

The book started slowly, and it took me some time to bond with it. Luckily, it’s set in the Pacific Northwest, my home for a couple of decades. I love the PNW and a book certainly can’t go wrong by being set there, in my opinion.

There is indeed an octopus. He serves as the pivot point for an assortment of storylines, each one dealing with someone’s personal struggles. Those struggles are varied, as are the people. An elderly woman faces retirement and has never found peace over the son she lost to the ocean. A young man wanders aimlessly, homelessly, the victim of his own bad decisions. A big-hearted grocery store owner can’t seem to get his heart noticed by the object of his affections. A paddleboard shop owner who might be the most normal person in the lot.

I won’t summarize the plot, because this is one of those delicate creations that weaves many threads together, in ways that are sometimes unexpected and occasionally predictable. By the time I reached the end, though, I was very satisfied with how everything worked out.