Books Like Remarkably Bright Creatures: 11 Novels of Grief, Warmth, and Unexpected Connection
If Remarkably Bright Creatures won you over with its octopus narrator, its cozy heartbreak, and its portrait of a woman finding her way back to life, these novels offer the same rare combination of warmth and genuine emotion.
By Lena Fischer
Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures found its audience the way the best books do: not through marketing campaigns but through readers pressing copies into other readers’ hands and saying, simply, that it made them cry and laugh on the same page. Tova Sullivan, a widow in her seventies working the overnight shift at a small Pacific Northwest aquarium, is grieving a loss she has never fully processed. Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus with a philosopher’s resignation and a surveillance specialist’s eye for human behavior, has been watching her more carefully than she knows. A young man arrives in town, and the pieces of a decades-old mystery begin to assemble themselves.
What the novel does — and what sets it apart from the many warm, cozy books published in its wake — is take its grief seriously. Tova’s loss is specific and irreversible. Marcellus’s awareness of his own approaching death gives the book a structural melancholy that its warmth does not cancel out but intensifies. The lightness is earned. The emotional payoff lands because Van Pelt never pretends the sadness isn’t real.
The eleven books below share that combination: genuine warmth built on genuine feeling, characters who have been shaped by loss and find, against the odds, that connection is still possible.
The Backman School of Nordic Warmth
#1 — A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The closest parallel on this list to Remarkably Bright Creatures: a prickly, grieving person who finds connection they did not ask for and could not have predicted. Ove is fifty-nine, recently retired against his will, recently widowed, and entirely certain that his life is finished. His attempts to end it are interrupted, repeatedly, by the neighbors he despises — a pregnant woman who cannot parallel park, a stray cat, a teenager with nowhere to be. Backman writes with the same tonal precision Van Pelt has: the comedy never undercuts the sadness, and the sadness never makes the comedy feel callous. By the end, Ove is one of the most beloved characters in contemporary fiction, not despite his gruffness but because of the grief underneath it.
#2 — Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
A failed bank robber takes a group of strangers hostage during an apartment viewing. The strangers are all, it turns out, carrying far more than they appear to be. Backman’s structural playfulness — the novel is part police procedural, part ensemble character study — disguises how seriously it takes its subjects: desperation, connection, the things people do when they have run out of options. The hostage situation premise is absurdist, but the emotions underneath it are not. Readers who loved Remarkably Bright Creatures for its unlikely premise paired with genuine heart will find Backman doing the same trick here with a different cast of characters.
#3 — My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
Elsa is seven, different, and does not fit in anywhere except with her grandmother, who tells her stories about an enchanted land called the Land of Almost Awake. When her grandmother dies, she leaves Elsa a series of letters to deliver to the neighbors — and those letters lead Elsa into her grandmother’s real history, the one behind the fairy tales. Backman’s most openly tender novel is about the relationship between a child and an old woman, about grief and legacy, and about the way people construct stories to hold the truths they cannot say directly. Readers who responded to the warmth between Tova and Marcellus will find the same quality of feeling here.
Cozy Magic and Found Family
#4 — The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Linus Baker works for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, evaluating care facilities that house children with unusual abilities. He is sent to a remote island orphanage to assess a particularly unusual set of residents: a gnome, a wyvern, a sprite, a were-Pomeranian, a child with the ability to see the future, and the Antichrist. TJ Klune’s novel is the coziest fantasy published in recent memory, and it shares Remarkably Bright Creatures’ central preoccupation: an ordinary, somewhat closed-off person who discovers, through an unlikely community, that belonging is still available to them. The warmth is enormous and entirely earned.
#5 — Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
Viv is an orc warrior who retires from adventuring to open the first coffee shop in a city that has never heard of coffee. The novel is explicitly, deliberately low-stakes: no world-ending threats, no epic quests, just a woman trying to build something quiet and good in a new place, and the community she finds while doing it. Baldree coined the term “cozy fantasy” to describe it, and the novel delivers exactly that. If what you loved most about Remarkably Bright Creatures was the Pacific Northwest setting, the small-community feel, and the sense of watching someone tentatively build a life, Legends and Lattes offers the same pleasures in a fantasy register.
#6 — Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
Wallace Price is a workaholic lawyer who dies unexpectedly and finds himself at a tea shop that exists between the living world and whatever comes next. The ferryman who runs it, Hugo, is patient and warm and not in any hurry. Wallace, who has spent his entire life being difficult, slowly learns what connection and presence actually mean — and whether a life spent in the wrong direction can be redirected, even now. Klune’s companion piece to The House in the Cerulean Sea shares Remarkably Bright Creatures’ preoccupation with mortality, time running short, and the question of whether it is too late to be the person you should have been. The answer, in both books, is the same.
Grief and Getting Back to Life
#7 — The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Nora Seed decides her life has no value, and finds herself in a library between life and death where every book contains a different version of the life she could have lived. She can step into any of them. What Haig’s novel shares with Remarkably Bright Creatures is the question it circles: not which life is best, but whether the life you are in — with its specific losses and specific griefs — is worth returning to. The fantasy premise gives the novel its structure; the emotional honesty gives it its weight. Both books arrive at the same hard-won, credible hope rather than simply asserting optimism.
#8 — Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant has lived the same controlled, solitary routine for years, protecting herself from something she cannot quite look at directly. She is odd, precise, and often unintentionally funny. A small act of kindness — helping an old man who has collapsed in the street — begins a chain of connections that gradually dismantles the walls she has built. Honeyman’s novel handles Eleanor’s traumatic backstory with the same restraint Van Pelt brings to Tova’s grief: the reader understands what happened before the character can say it directly, and that gap between what we know and what she can face is where the emotional weight lives.
#9 — The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Don Tillman is a genetics professor who has decided, with characteristic precision, that he needs to find a wife. He designs a questionnaire to eliminate unsuitable candidates. Rosie, who fails every criterion on the questionnaire, appears immediately. Simsion’s novel is lighter in tone than the others on this list — it is primarily a romantic comedy — but it shares Remarkably Bright Creatures’ quality of making the reader root helplessly for a protagonist who experiences the world differently and has built walls around themselves that the right person dismantles. Don is funny and touching in ways that accumulate slowly and land hard.
Mysteries with Heart
#10 — The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Four retirees at a luxury Sussex care village meet every Thursday to examine unsolved murders. When a real murder lands on their doorstep, they are delighted. Richard Osman’s debut novel is driven by the same engine as Remarkably Bright Creatures: characters you want to spend time with regardless of plot, a mystery that exists primarily as a vehicle for those characters, and an older protagonist whose intelligence and warmth the narrative treats with full respect. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim are among the most enjoyable ensemble casts in recent popular fiction. Osman writes about aging and approaching death with the same light touch Van Pelt brings to Marcellus’s chapters.
#11 — Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
Nine guests arrive at a luxury wellness retreat run by the charismatic and mysterious Masha. Each of them is carrying something. The resort is not what it appears to be. Moriarty is the Australian Backman — an ensemble novelist who uses slightly absurdist premises to deliver genuine warmth and genuine feeling about grief, connection, and what people need from each other. Nine Perfect Strangers is funnier and stranger than most of Moriarty’s work, and it shares Remarkably Bright Creatures’ quality of making you care deeply about a cast of characters you would never have expected to love.
How to Choose Your Next Read
If you want the most direct parallel: A Man Called Ove — prickly protagonist, genuine grief, unexpected connection, Nordic warmth.
If you want more Fredrik Backman: either Anxious People for an ensemble with emotional depth, or My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry for intergenerational warmth.
If you want cozy fantasy: The House in the Cerulean Sea for found family, Legends and Lattes for low-stakes community-building, or Under the Whispering Door for the mortality angle.
If you want the same grief-and-hope arc: The Midnight Library or Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine — both are novels about women who have been shaped by loss and find, slowly, that life is still available to them.
If you want a mystery with characters you love: The Thursday Murder Club — older protagonists, wit, warmth, and a genuine whodunit.
If you want something funnier: The Rosie Project delivers all the warmth with more comedy and less melancholy.
For the Best Fiction Books
For the definitive guide to fiction — the greatest novels across literary fiction, classics, and contemporary writing — see our Best Fiction Books of All Time list.
More Women’s Fiction Reading Guides
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Remarkably Bright Creatures appropriate for all ages?
Yes — it is a gentle, warm novel with no graphic content. It deals with grief (the loss of a son) and a cold case mystery, but handles both with the lightness of touch that characterises the best cozy fiction. It is appropriate for readers of all adult ages and is frequently recommended as a book for book clubs.
Does the octopus narrator really work?
It really does. Tova's story would be moving without him, but Marcellus the octopus — grumpy, intelligent, philosophically resigned to his brief lifespan — gives the novel a second register entirely. He knows things Tova doesn't. He has opinions about the humans he observes. And the way Van Pelt uses his limited time remaining to structure the novel's emotional stakes is genuinely moving.
What is Remarkably Bright Creatures about?
Tova Sullivan, a widow in her seventies, works the overnight cleaning shift at a small-town aquarium in the Pacific Northwest. She forms an unlikely bond with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who narrates his own chapters and has been watching Tova more carefully than she knows. A young man's arrival in town connects to Tova's decades-old grief over the death of her son. It is a mystery, a love story of sorts, and a cozy novel about finding connection at any age.
What other books has Shelby Van Pelt written?
Remarkably Bright Creatures is Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel, published in 2022. It became a word-of-mouth phenomenon and a major bestseller. As of 2025 she has not published a second novel.
