This was my book group read for March 2024. The book has many thousands of positive reviews, but I feel that it is overhyped. I didn’t hate it, in fact it was a nice sweet easy read. An older woman, recently widowed and still grieving the loss of her teenage son many years ago works as a cleaner in the local aquarium and befriends the octopus who lives there. The octopus narrates some of the chapters, and while that is quite fun, and does move the plot along in certain key ways, I found the voice of the octopus to be too human. I am quite fascinated by what little I know about octopuses being very intelligent, the octopus’s voice just sounded like a human who lived in a tank – I wanted it to be more ‘other’ – I’m not sure how, but hmm, that’s what I thought.
There were some nice small town American characters – it could have been an episode of Virgin River!
Sarah Wray Writer 