We’re always on the look-out for something a little different when we’re choosing our Skylarking book club titles, and when we came across Remarkably Bright Creatures. we kind of knew we might have hit the jackpot. A mourning widow forms an unlikely friendship with an octopus? Sign. Us, Up.

As usual, we’ll be meeting at 6:30 p.m. on the last Thursday on June - that’s June 30. There’s no fee to attend - we just ask that you purchase your copy of the book from Skylark, either in person or online.

For fans of A Man Called Ove, this is a charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope. One of our favorite authors, Kevin Wilson, wrote: “Remarkably Bright Creatures is a beautiful examination of how loneliness can be transformed, cracked open, with the slightest touch from another living thing.”

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. 

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Shelby Van Pelt lives in the suburbs of Chicago with her family. Remarkably Bright Creatures is her first novel.