Is there an audiobook of Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel?

Yes. Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie.

How long is the Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel audiobook?

The Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel audiobook runs 11 hr 16 min.

Is Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on September 12, 2026.

What formats is Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel available in?

On Amazon, Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel comes as a Kindle ebook, a paperback and a hardcover.

Our review

Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel

Name: Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel
Author: Shelby Van Pelt

Shelby Van Pelt

4.6/ 5 · Outstanding

Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures pairs a widowed night cleaner at a small aquarium with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who knows more about her missing son than anyone suspects. A warm, sneakily profound debut about grief, connection, and the strange forms rescue can take.

Narrated by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie

Audiobook · 11 hr 16 min

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The Review

Our take

The audacity of this novel is that its wisest voice belongs to an octopus, and within three pages the choice feels less like a gimmick than a gift. Marcellus narrates from his tank at the Sowell Bay Aquarium in short, imperious chapters, counting down the days of a giant Pacific octopus's brief life, unimpressed by the humans who tap his glass and quietly fond of the one who doesn't. That one is Tova Sullivan, seventy, recently widowed, who cleans the aquarium at night not for the money but because scrubbing floors is the only grief ritual that has ever worked for her. Van Pelt writes their growing acquaintance, a woman and a mollusk trading small courtesies through glass after hours, with such tenderness that the book's central image, one of his arms wrapped around hers, comes to stand for every unlikely thing that keeps a person going.

Tova has been carrying a locked room for thirty years: her son Erik, eighteen, vanished on a boat in Puget Sound one night, and the not-knowing has calcified into a life of Swedish stoicism, dishcloths, and a social circle of ladies who mean well and land wrong. What she doesn't know, and what Marcellus does, is where the story of that night actually leads. Into this arrives Cameron, a thirty-year-old Californian with a talent for losing jobs and a childhood-shaped hole where his parents should be, who drifts north chasing a rumor of a father. The novel braids the three of them slowly. You will likely see how the strands connect well before the characters do, and Van Pelt seems untroubled by that, because the book's suspense was never whodunit. It is whether these particular wounded people will let the truth reach them in time.

What elevates the novel is how much respect it has for competence and routine as expressions of love. Tova's cleaning, Ethan the grocer's fussed-over produce, Marcellus's meticulous escape runs timed to the security cameras, each is a character telling the truth sideways. Van Pelt's prose stays plain and unhurried, with a gentle comic timing that peaks whenever Marcellus reviews humanity's flaws like a disappointed professor. Cameron is the book's gamble. He arrives self-pitying and careless, the kind of young man readers write off, and his growing up under the patient attention of near-strangers is deliberately slow; a few of his backslides test the middle chapters. The payoff is a portrait of how mentoring actually works, incremental and unglamorous, nobody transformed overnight.

Why you should read

Fans of A Man Called Ove and Eleanor Oliphant
Readers who love unlikely-friendship stories
Animal lovers open to a nonhuman narrator
Book clubs that want warmth with real grief underneath

What to expect

Chapters narrated by a sardonic, brilliant octopus
A gentle mystery you may solve before the characters
Unhurried pacing built on small-town routines
A tearjerker ending that lands softly

Underneath the charm this is a book about the endings people choose when they think no one needs them, and it treats an old woman's future as a question worth an entire plot, which remains rarer in fiction than it should be. The final movement, as Marcellus's day count runs low and Tova's house fills with boxes, manages to be both inevitable and surprising, and it sent me back through earlier chapters to watch the machinery of kindness I had missed. Few recent novels argue so persuasively that it is never too late to be found, or that the finding can come from the last creature you would think to ask.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.6/ 5

Outstanding

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Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel?: Yes. Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie.
Listen free with Audible
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel audiobook?: The Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel audiobook runs 11 hr 16 min.
Is Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on September 12, 2026.
What formats is Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel available in?: On Amazon, Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel comes as a Kindle ebook, a paperback and a hardcover.

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Common questions

What is Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel about?: The audacity of this novel is that its wisest voice belongs to an octopus, and within three pages the choice feels less like a gimmick than a gift. Marcellus narrates from his tank at the Sowell Bay Aquarium in short, imperious chapters, counting down the days of a giant Pacific octopus's brief…
Is Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel worth reading?: We scored Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel 4.6 out of 5. Shelby Van Pelt's Remarkably Bright Creatures pairs a widowed night cleaner at a small aquarium with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who knows more about her missing son than anyone suspects. A warm, sneakily profound debut about grief, connection, and the strange forms…

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