I can think of no better way to spend a Sunday than celebrating great storytelling, munching on popcorn, and discussing the importance of diversity and representation. In other words, the 90th Academy Awards did not disappoint — especially when the winner for best picture was announced.

In addition to winning best picture, The Shape of Water, an intricate and powerful story that seamlessly weaves fantasy, horror, and romance together, also took home awards for best director, best original music score, and best production design. The Shape of Water is set in Cold War-era Baltimore at the Occam Aerospace Research Center, which recently received its most sensitive asset ever: an amphibious man captured in the Amazon. What follows is an emotional romance between the asset and one of the janitors at the center, a mute woman who uses sign language to communicate with the sea creature.

Developed from the ground up by visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro and celebrated author Daniel Kraus, The Shape of Water is not merely a film novelization, nor a film adaptation: they are separate mediums for telling the same engrossing story. The idea was born on an Iowa tennis court when Kraus was just 15-years-old. Nearly three decades later, he vividly remembers coming up with a story about a creature locked in a lab and a janitor that tries to break it out. The idea played out in his mind for years, and came to life years later as an already successful author after having breakfast with del Toro in Toronto.

The Shape of Water novel publishes today, and beloved narrator Jenna Lamia makes the story even more mesmerizing through audio. Read more and sample the audio.