Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is an engrossing novel that features the characters of Tova Sullivan, Cameron Cassmore, and Marcellus the giant pacific octopus. It's an ingeniously put together book with first-person narration from Marcellus interspersed throughout and a really fun read.
Cameron is a young adult without much going on in his life who goes from California to the small town of Sowell Bay, Washington in search of his biological father.
Tova is the cleaning person at Sowell Bay Aquarium, by herself after the passing of her longtime husband a few years prior, and only son Erik decades before, and is contemplating a move to Bellingham, where she can "not be a burden on people."
There's also the local grocery store owner, Ethan, who befriends Cameron, and likes Tova. The connections between the characters both develop and reveal themselves and it's an exceptionally nice story that Van Pelt provides in her debut novel.
