Books Like Remarkably Bright Creatures
Some books arrive with almost no fanfare and then refuse to leave your heart. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is exactly that book. It is the story of Tova Sullivan, a seventy-year-old widow who works the night shift cleaning the aquarium in her small Pacific Northwest town, trying to outrun the grief of losing her son decades earlier. And it is the story of Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who lives in that aquarium - a creature of startling intelligence and wit, who has been observing the humans for years and has decided that Tova needs his help.
What follows is a mystery, a friendship, and a reckoning with grief - narrated in part by an octopus who is funny, sardonic, and strangely wise. The novel became a word-of-mouth phenomenon because it does something almost nobody expected: it makes you fall in love with an octopus and then breaks and mends your heart with the same gentle hands. If that is the feeling you want next, the books below share its warmth, its quirkiness and its faith in unexpected connection.
Why Marcellus Works
The risk of narrating part of a novel from the point of view of an octopus is that it could feel gimmicky. Van Pelt avoids this entirely by making Marcellus a genuine character - not a cartoon, but a creature with his own voice, his own grudges, and his own wry understanding of the humans who gawk at him. His chapters are short, which keeps them from wearing out their welcome, and they are salted with observations that are funny on the surface and surprisingly deep underneath.
Marcellus also serves a structural purpose: because he has spent years watching the aquarium’s visitors, he knows things the other characters do not - including the truth about what happened to Tova’s son. That makes him the perfect detective for a novel that is, at heart, about a woman finally learning the truth about the worst day of her life. It is a beautiful piece of storytelling machinery disguised as a whimsical choice.
The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa
Nana is a stray cat with a strong opinion about everything, adopted by a kind young man named Satoru. When Satoru’s circumstances change and he must find Nana a new home, the two set out on a journey across Japan, visiting Satoru’s old friends and asking each one to take the cat in. Along the way, the true reason for the journey slowly emerges.
Like Remarkably Bright Creatures, this is a novel narrated partly by an animal - and like Marcellus, Nana is a fully realized character with a voice of his own: proud, fussy, deeply loyal. Both novels use their animal narrators to see human grief with fresh eyes, and both build toward endings that are quietly devastating and utterly right. It is a short book, but it has made grown readers weep in public, and it belongs at the top of any list like this one.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Ove is a grumpy, rule-obsessed widower who has decided he has had enough of the world. His plan to leave it keeps being interrupted by the chaotic young family next door, who need his help with everything from a broken radiator to a parking dispute - and slowly, against his will, Ove is pulled back into the world of the living.
The kinship with Remarkably Bright Creatures is in the tone: both novels pair grief with stubborn, funny characters and surrounding communities that refuse to let them close themselves off. Tova and Ove are siblings in spirit - older, grieving, prickly, and secretly desperate for connection. Backman writes with more overt humor, but the emotional architecture is the same, and readers of one almost always love the other.
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
Ivan is a silverback gorilla who lives in a shopping mall, performing for crowds and believing that his life is fine, just fine. Then a baby elephant named Ruby arrives, and Ivan begins to see his world differently - and to make a promise that will require him to be braver than he has ever been.
This is the book that proved, long before Marcellus, that animal narrators can carry serious literary weight. Written for young readers but beloved by adults, it shares Remarkably Bright Creatures’ animal perspective, its theme of captivity and freedom, and its quietly radical insistence that animals are characters with inner lives worth honoring. It is based on a real gorilla, which gives the story an extra ache, and it won the Newbery Medal for good reason.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in the 1960s who would rather be in a lab than anywhere else - but the world has other plans. After a series of events she did not choose, she ends up hosting a cooking show, where she teaches America’s housewives to think like scientists, one perfectly measured roux at a time.
This one is a different flavor - it is sharper, funnier and more overtly feminist than Remarkably Bright Creatures - but it shares the same DNA: a prickly, brilliant protagonist who does not fit the world’s expectations, a beloved dog sidekick with a point of view, and a story about finding family and purpose in unexpected places. It also shares the novel’s warmth and its refusal to let its heroine be diminished. For readers who loved Tova’s stubbornness and dignity, Elizabeth Zott is an unforgettable companion.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune
Linus Baker is a by-the-book caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, a man so devoted to rules that he has forgotten how to live. Then he is sent on a highly classified assignment to a remote island where six extraordinary children - a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, and others - live with a mysterious caretaker. What Linus finds there will change everything he believes about rules, about children, and about himself.
The connection to Remarkably Bright Creatures is the deep current of found family and the gentle humor with which it treats characters who are different. Both novels are about lonely people who find their people, and both are suffused with a warmth that feels almost radical in its sincerity. Klune’s book is more whimsical and more explicitly magical, but it shares the same beating heart.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in the 1960s who would rather be in a lab than anywhere else - but the world has other plans. After a series of events she did not choose, she ends up hosting a cooking show, where she teaches America’s housewives to think like scientists, one perfectly measured roux at a time.
This one is a different flavor - it is sharper, funnier and more overtly feminist than Remarkably Bright Creatures - but it shares the same DNA: a prickly, brilliant protagonist who does not fit the world’s expectations, a beloved dog sidekick with a point of view, and a story about finding family and purpose in unexpected places. It also shares the novel’s warmth and its refusal to let its heroine be diminished. For readers who loved Tova’s stubbornness and dignity, Elizabeth Zott is an unforgettable companion.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune
Linus Baker is a by-the-book caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, a man so devoted to rules that he has forgotten how to live. Then he is sent on a highly classified assignment to a remote island where six extraordinary children - a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, and others - live with a mysterious caretaker. What Linus finds there will change everything he believes about rules, about children, and about himself.
The connection to Remarkably Bright Creatures is the deep current of found family and the gentle humor with which it treats characters who are different. Both novels are about lonely people who find their people, and both are suffused with a warmth that feels almost radical in its sincerity. Klune’s book is more whimsical and more explicitly magical, but it shares the same beating heart.
The Tenderness of the Ordinary
One of the quiet pleasures of Remarkably Bright Creatures is how much attention it pays to ordinary life - the routines of a night shift, the small rituals of a town, the particular texture of grief lived day by day. Van Pelt writes with the same tenderness for the mundane that makes readers feel seen: here is a novel that understands that a life is mostly made of small things, and that love is mostly shown in small ways. That attention to the ordinary is part of why the book feels so true, and it is a quality shared by every book on this list.
Grief, Community and the Courage to Keep Living
At its center, Remarkably Bright Creatures is a novel about grief - about the decades-long process of learning to live with loss. What makes it bearable, the novel suggests, is connection: the friendship of an octopus, the kindness of a teenager, the stubborn rhythms of a job that needs doing. Researchers who study grief describe exactly this: healing rarely happens alone, and it rarely happens quickly; it happens in small increments, with other people, often in places you would never expect.
If you want to read more about how communities hold grieving people, our collection of family-friendly books about community and belonging gathers warm novels in this spirit, and our guide to meaningful family healing for adults explores the research on mending what is broken. Browse the relationships section for more recommendations whenever you are ready.
Choosing Your Next Read
If you want another animal narrator who will break your heart, read The Travelling Cat Chronicles. If you want the same grumpy-widow-healed-by-community arc, A Man Called Ove is the one. If you want an animal narrator with the weight of a Newbery Medal behind it, try The One and Only Ivan. And if you want a prickly, brilliant heroine with a dog sidekick, Lessons in Chemistry will delight you.
Conclusion
Remarkably Bright Creatures is a novel about the unexpected places love comes from - a night shift, an aquarium, an octopus with strong opinions and a very long memory. It reminds us that grief does not have to be carried alone, and that the world is full of remarkably bright creatures, human and otherwise, who are waiting to be our friends. The books gathered here share that belief, and any of them will leave you a little warmer than it found you.
