I meant to just peruse the first few pages over lunch one day, but I ended up reading the whole thing over the next few days (which meant putting off my book club book, whoops!) The book opens and closes in the haunted setting of a mall aquarium that is home to an enormous, ancient Pacific octopus rescued from the dangerously polluted “Bering Vortex.” This made for a compelling opening, and a resonant recurring image throughout the book, but this is not ecofiction or spec fiction, as I assumed: it is a lovely, engaging novel about relationships–family, friends, romance–and transitioning into adulthood. The mysterious Vortex, the slightly mutated octopus, and a few other plot devices (like the dating app that matches user by algorithm rather than by profile) are what I would call speculative elements, but what drives the plot and draws in the reader is main character Ro and her relatable fears and griefs.