
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Saskia Maarleveld
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By:
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Emma Knight
About this listen
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY
“Undeniably delicious.”—The New York Times
“A spellbinding debut about friendship, motherhood, first love, and the choices that bind us. . . I couldn't put it down!”—Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Summer Will Be Different
A witty, atmospheric, and brilliantly told novel that offers compelling portraits of womanhood, motherhood and female friendship, along with the irresistible intrigue surrounding an extraordinary British family
Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she’ll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father’s—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox’s centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents’ secret, just as she’s falling in love for the first time . . .
As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life. A rich and rewarding novel of campus life, of sexual awakening, and ultimately, of the many ways women can become mothers in this world, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus asks to what extent we need to look back in order to move forward.
©2025 Emma Knight (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
”Undeniably delicious . . . . A tantalizing yet quietly touching debut about inheritance, emerging sexuality and what it truly means to come into one’s own.”—The New York Times
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- By: Allegra Goodman
- Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Allegra Goodman
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes a unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.
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Keep going
- By Mary on 04-26-25
By: Allegra Goodman
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Good Girl
- A Novel
- By: Aria Aber
- Narrated by: Mozhan Navabi
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist. Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of freedom.
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Rebel, Rebel
- By Suzanna on 02-17-25
By: Aria Aber
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Blob
- A Love Story
- By: Maggie Su
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Aimless after getting dumped by her boyfriend and dropping out of college, Vi works at the front desk of a hotel where she greets guests, refills cucumber water samovars, and tries to evade her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. Little does Vi know her life is about to be permanently transformed when she agrees to a night out with Rachel. In the alley outside the bar, Vi discovers a strange blob—a small living creature with beady black eyes.
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really different
- By Jeannie Bench on 02-24-25
By: Maggie Su
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Three Days in June
- A Novel
- By: Anne Tyler
- Narrated by: J. Smith-Cameron
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.
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Simple, Enjoyable, performed 5 stars
- By PM on 02-14-25
By: Anne Tyler
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This Motherless Land
- A Novel
- By: Nikki May
- Narrated by: Weruche Opia, Florence Howard
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.
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Details
- By Susan S. on 05-19-25
By: Nikki May
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We All Live Here
- A Novel
- By: Jojo Moyes
- Narrated by: Jenna Coleman
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.
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Sad
- By C. J. Kromminga on 02-12-25
By: Jojo Moyes
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The Lotus Shoes
- By: Jane Yang
- Narrated by: Catherine Ho, Katharine Chin
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
1800s China. Tightly bound feet, or "golden lilies," are the mark of an honorable woman, eclipsing beauty, a rich dowry and even bloodline in the marriage stakes. When Little Flower is sold as a maidservant—a muizai—to Linjing, a daughter of the prominent Fong family, she clings to the hope that one day her golden lilies will lead her out of slavery. Not only does Little Flower have bound feet, uncommon for a muizai, but she is extraordinarily gifted at embroidery, a skill associated with the highest class of a lady.
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As an Asian American…wow!
- By Jessica R. on 04-24-25
By: Jane Yang
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Nesting
- A Novel
- By: Roisín O'Donnell
- Narrated by: Louisa Harland
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a bright spring afternoon, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes off the clothesline, she straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe—and that this time, when she leaves, she must stay away. On the surface, she has a perfect life: her husband, Ryan, is a good provider, sometimes even kind and attentive, from a nice Irish family, and they have another baby on the way.
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Jarring narration at times
- By Anonymous User on 04-04-25
By: Roisín O'Donnell
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Those Fatal Flowers
- A Novel
- By: Shannon Ives
- Narrated by: E A Castillo
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Greco-Roman mythology and the mystery of the vanished Roanoke colony collide in this epic adventure filled with sapphic longing and female rage—a debut novel for fans of Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint, and Natalie Haynes.
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from a certain point of view
- By theresah on 02-05-25
By: Shannon Ives
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Sworn
- The Vampire Legends - Book 1
- By: Emma Knight
- Narrated by: Kati Fredlund
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When her dad is transferred, Rachel Wood is uprooted from her home in Pennsylvania and forced to enter a new high school in 10th grade, in an affluent suburb in Westchester, New York. She finds herself in way over her head as she struggles to come to grips with meeting new friends, finding a boyfriend, avoiding the cliques of mean girls, and figuring out how to survive in such a hostile, new world.
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Teen Angst
- By Cathy Moore on 03-10-22
By: Emma Knight
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Going Home
- A Novel
- By: Tom Lamont
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Going Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men—all of whom are completely ill-suited for fatherhood—take charge of a toddler following an unexpected loss.
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Great Story
- By E G Neufeld on 03-12-25
By: Tom Lamont
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Life Hacks for a Little Alien
- By: Alice Franklin
- Narrated by: Sally Phillips
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
“Climb up here, Little Alien. Sit next to me. I will tell you about life on this planet. I will tell you how it goes.” Before she thinks of herself as Little Alien, our narrator is only a lonely little girl living in southeast England, who doesn’t understand the world the way other children seem to. So when a late-night TV special introduces her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript—an ancient tome written in an indecipherable language—Little Alien experiences something she hasn’t before: hope. Could there be others like her, who also feel like they’re from another planet?
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Capturing neurodivergent thoughts
- By K. Salada on 04-16-25
By: Alice Franklin
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Junie
- A Novel
- By: Erin Crosby Eckstine
- Narrated by: Angel Pean
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act.
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Great read! Really enjoyed the storytelling!
- By Summer on 05-26-25
Boring. DNF.
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Well written and excellent and performances by the narrators, but shallow story.
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the story was real and perceptive
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Captivating
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Nice twist!
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Delightful characters.
Beautifully written, beautifully narrated
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Characters
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Incredible writing!
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Odd Title
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Gorgeous prose, women’s connections to themselves and each other, and fantastic narrator.
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