People who know me well — who know I love to read, and who know about my deep affection for octopuses — have been asking me the same question ever since this book was published: “Have you read Remarkably Bright Creatures?”

Until recently, my answer was always the same: “Not yet. But I own a copy.”

Reader, I have now read it. And I understand why they kept asking.

Eight limbs. Three hearts. Astounding intelligence. The octopus is a symbol of adaptability, curiosity, transformation, and flexibility. They are endlessly complex — so much more nuanced than humans have yet figured out. They prefer solitude. (Same, octopus. Same.) I love them so much I have one tattooed on my arm, so when I tell you that Marcellus the Giant Pacific Octopus is one of the most singular characters I have ever encountered in fiction, I want you to understand that I am not an easy audience. I have opinions about octopuses. Shelby Van Pelt got him right.

The story is told in rotating perspectives: Tova, a Finnish-American widow who works night shifts cleaning the Sowell Bay Aquarium; Cameron, a young man from Modesto who has just convinced himself he knows who his father is and sets out to find him; and Marcellus himself, who has been observing the humans around him from his tank with considerably more insight than any of them realize.

Tova and Marcellus find each other by accident — he had slipped out of his tank, as he apparently often did, and would have made it back undetected if not for an unfortunate tangle of cords. Startled but not unkind, Tova helps him free himself. He returns to his tank. And something begins. Their friendship, unlikely and unspoken and entirely real, is the warm center around which everything else in this novel orbits.

Michael Urie’s narration of Marcellus in the audiobook is nothing short of extraordinary. He made me laugh, he made me cry, and he honored every nuance Van Pelt built into this character — the dry observations, the deep feeling underneath the curmudgeonly exterior, the way Marcellus understands the humans around him better than they understand themselves. I would listen to an entire audiobook of just Marcellus. Someone make that happen.

Cameron, I’ll be honest, I found a little whiny. His journey is understandable, even sympathetic, but he tries the patience. He is a young man who doesn’t yet know what he’s looking for, and it shows. It’s Marcellus who sees what Cameron and Tova could be to each other long before either of them does.

This book is rich with the details of being human — grief that doesn’t resolve so much as reshape, family that finds you when you’ve stopped expecting it, and the particular comfort of a creature who simply knows things, with a baffling certainty that bypasses language entirely. Much like the human heart, really.

I finished it a little teary and a lot grateful. Bittersweet in the best possible way.

If someone in your life has been asking you, “Have you read Remarkably Bright Creatures?” — this is your sign.