TLDR: A lighthearted story with a garbled message due to its inability to know what character arcs are for. Read this if you like to read books and not think about what they mean. And I guess if you need something with a cute cover to bring to the beach?

The only reason why I actually finished this book is because I was listening to it as an audiobook, and it was too much effort to stop what I was doing and change it to something else. If this was a physical book, I would have DNF’ed it probably 60% of the way through.

Here’s the thing, that feels harsh. It’s harsh because it’s a cute little premise with cute little characters on their cute little journey—and I really don't want to be that guy who hates lighthearted stories because they're not challenging or whatever. But by god is this execution incredibly bland.

For example, let’s take the characters. A septuagenarian and a late-twenties failure. We don’t get a lot of these as main characters, let alone two of them, together. Unfortunately, van Pelt does not have a good understanding in how characters should change and progress throughout the course of a story.

For example, we’re about 65% into the story, and our main character Tova is still dealing with the same character flaws as she does in the first chapter. Unfortunately, she actually has a better arc than our failson Cameron who, by all intents and purposes, is a whole bag of ‘how not to write’ all on his own.

This is a debut novel, and these are debut novel issues. These problems are easy to fix—hopefully a more experienced writer gives the Netflix adaptation a once-over to get that messaging actually feel satisfying instead of mildly grating.

The octopus is great though. No notes. Marcellus, my sassy, eight-limbed boy, five stars for you.