Remarkably Bright Creatures (by Shelby Van Pelt)

If you are looking for an old fashioned feel-good story, this one might be for you. This debut novel is framed as a mystery. There are two separate storylines that will eventually converge at the end of the novel.

First, we have Tova who is a 70 year old, recently widowed woman, who works nights as a janitor at Puget Sound's Sowell Bay Aquarium. Tova has definitely had her struggles in life, losing her 18-year old son, who was found at the bottom of a lake about 30 years ago.

The second storyline introduces us to Cameron, a 30 year old whose deadbeat mom left him with an aunt in a California trailer park when he was 9 years old. He is in a garage band and can't seem to keep a job, so he heads to Sowell Bay to find his father and shake him down for money.

The best part is that the story is narrated by Marcellus, a giant Pacific Octopus who thinks and feels as humans do, squeezes out of his tank late at night to go for snack runs, and hides trinkets he finds deep inside his tank.

My Verdict: This book is ultimately about what it feels like to have love taken from you, only to find it again in the most unexpected places. It is a sweet, warm, funny, and heartbreaking novel -- all at the same time. I found it predictable, but that did not take away from the story for me. In fact, it kind of reminded me of the old television shows I watched as a kid. It is full of gentle people powering through the scars life has imposed on them and it shows that life can beat people up but that doesn't mean it has taken them down. I give this one 4.5 stars.