3.5 stars
Gifted & Talented is the story of three "telepathically and electrokinetically gifted" siblings who are forced to come to terms with their rivalries, magical abilities and unrealized potential when their brilliant but distant father Thayer Wren, CEO of Wrenfare Magitech, dies unexpectedly.

Meredith, the eldest daughter, runs her own biotech company with a successful product that purports to have cured mental illness but her journalist ex-boyfriend is investigating her for fraud, middle child Arthur is the second youngest congressman in history but he's losing his re-election campaign, and Eilidh, the youngest child, was once the world's most famous ballerina but is working in marketing at her father's company after a life-altering injury five years earlier ended her career. The three siblings are forced to confront the past and deal with present complications as they prepare for their father's funeral and await the reading of the will to discover who has been tapped to take over their father's billion dollar business empire.

I haven't read any of bestselling author Olivie Blake's previous books and don't generally care for fantasy or magical realism but the description of Gifted & Talented appealed to me despite that. As it turns out, the three Wren siblings have magical abilities (never fully explained) but the story is more about the family relationships so it felt more like contemporary family drama with elements of fantasy to me.

This is a long (500+ pages), slow-paced, character-driven story of a dysfunctional family told from multiple points of view and I had no idea where it was going but was hooked from the beginning anyway. Set in the world of the filthy rich, none of the characters are particularly likeable yet you can't help but love them and the family dynamics between siblings are relatable even if the world they live in is not. I enjoyed Blake's style of writing and storytelling and, although I thought it was building to a more dramatic conclusion, this was overall a satisfying read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for sending a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I ended up DNFing 10% of the way into the book. The book was extremely dry and I was bored. I did like that we got multiple character POV, but I just feel like there should have been a better way to introduce us to each of the characters.

Unfortunately this was a very quick dnf. The writing is all over the place and jumped from thoughts so quickly that it just didn't make sense what was happening. The writing style also feels very juvenile and not what I'd expect from someone with so many books under their belt.

Olivie has crafted another intricate story focusing on the highs and lows of “power”. The Wren siblings have their fair share of struggles and can be hard to root for. I was a bit disappointed by the execution of different plot lines and wish there was more usage of the powers that the Wren children have. I do feel that this book is perfect for those who crave a “Succession” inspired story, however for me, I was only able to make it to 60% before setting it aside. I’m bummed because Olivie’s work is usually an easy 4-5 stars, but this one just missed the mark for me!

Genuinely my favorite book of the year. I will never stop talking about this. Eldest daughter being assholes because of parents is valid and I feel called out and in desperate need to go back to therapy.

This book was great. I think the writing style was something I have never read before but I enjoyed it and I found it hard to put down, as the story itself was very unique. The last bit drug on a little for me as I was anxious to get to the big reveals at the end and I will say the plot twist was surprising to me. I liked how the story wrapped up for the characters and it was a satisfying ending. I wish there would have been an epilogue though because I would have loved to see how a few characters carried out the things given to them at the end of the book year down the line. Overall a great book with a unique plot that I have never see before. And I would recommend.

thank you netgalley and tor for this e-arc! olivie - my fairy godmother, thank you for writing yet another banger. i laughed, i cried, i threw my kindle across the room. every emotion was felt. scroll to see my full review and pick this up when it releases 4/1 - you won’t regret it!

thank you net galley and tor for this e-arc! i went into this book blind and damn it, olivie strikes again (although how could i expect anything left, the woman only knows how to write bangers).

if you were a fan of the tv show succession, but wished there were some magical elements - look no further, this is your book. after the unexpected death of their billionaire father, the Wren children (meredith, arthur, and eilidh) convene in their childhood home to navigate their grief, reflect on their complicated relationship of their father, and ultimately wait to hear how their father bequeathed his magitech company in his will.

each child has their own eccentric personality, but as olivie said in the first sentence of the book, they are all really assholes at the end of the day. and to wrap this all up with a bow, they all of them suffer from magical extremities - seriously olivie, i need to be in your brain for a day (for science).

let’s face it, they all kind of suck. but as much as i love to hate them, i hate to love them as well. at the end of the day, we are shaped by our parents or parental figures, and they became this way through very complicated relationships with their parents. olivie had me laughing out loud, per usual, with her witty pros and hilarious asides. i’m a sucker for a stream of consciousness tirade, especially from the queen herself. this also had one of the best unreliable narrators in the game - the reveal was truly jaw dropping.

olivie is so damn smart, and her characters feel so real, raw, and treated with the utmost care. i think this may be her best yet. pick this up on 4/1 if you’re looking for a chaotic, messy, and hilarious family drama with our favorite asshole billionaire fam.

My Rating: 4 stars!

The pipeline from gifted child to depressed and/or anxiety-ridden adult strikes again.

This book was, definitely, a book. All the characters were, in their own ways, deeply unlikable in a way that kinda made you love them. The plot being three adults forced to deal with their own shortcomings with the sudden death of their father mixed together with magical maladies and possible apocalypses made me constantly question what was happening and what I was reading, but I found myself turning the page and always wanting to know more.

I wish we’d gotten a continuation, to find out just what happened after everything was decided on. And I feel like the Philippa outcome was random in its placement (which could fit in with the suddenness and meaninglessness of life, but still felt odd) as well as something that was swept away too quickly, no real outcome discovered.

4.25 stars ~ You know that feeling when a book feels like it was written just for you? That’s Gifted & Talented. It’s funny, heartbreaking, and weird in the best way—classic Olivie Blake. The premise hooked me right away: the pipeline from gifted kid to clinically depressed adult. Olivie, don’t make me spiral rn please. Blake takes that very real existential dread and spins it into something sharp, relatable, and surprisingly hilarious.

If you liked the voice in Blake’s last release, Januaries, you’ll be right at home here. Expect fourth-wall breaks, philosophical tangents, and plenty of snark. I was highlighting lines every other page. The only thing that brought this down for me is that It’s a little long—there were moments where I wished for a faster pace.. The characters are messy and chaotic (think Umbrella Academy), the magic is casual and hilarious, and the vibe is just immaculate.

If you’re into family drama with humor, heart, and a splash of magical nonsense, this one’s for you. Someone, please make it a TV show.. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group | Tor Books for this arc!

I keep debating between a 4.75 and a 5 star rating for Gifted & Talented, but l've decided to keep it at a 5. Maybe I'll change my mind after a while, who knows. Gifted & Talented revolves around the Wren siblings after their father, Thayer Wren, has died. Meredith, the eldest Wren, is the CEO of an app that guarantees happiness, but it was founded on fraud. Meredith's first love, Jamie, threatens to publish an article that would destroy the reputation of Meredith's company. Arthur, the middle Wren, is a congressman who is likely to lose his reelection. He is married, but also in a polyamorous relationship outside of his marriage. Ellidh, the youngest Wren, was a prodigious ballerina before a major car accident that took away her dancing abilities. On top of all their flaws, the Wrens have magical powers.
My time reading this was kind of rough, l'd say. I picked this up in December, read about three chapters, and then put it down. I just now picked it up during spring break, and it was a great decision on my part, honestly. This novel was wasn't perfect. There wasn't a concrete plot; the plot seemed to center around the relationships between the Wren siblings. The writing was phenomenal, of course, but man did the vocabulary drive me crazy sometimes. Some of the word choice was unnecessary, but I was able to overlook it for how amazing the book is.
The Wrens were not written to be likable. They all have prominent flaws. I think my favorite sibling has to be Meredith. I'd say I can see myself the most in her, specifically in her academics. Meredith has this drive to not fail. She is very arrogant, but she is aware of it. I, of course, like Eilidh and Arthur, too. Arthur loves his wife Gillian, but he also loves his other partners, too. Is he meant to choose between them? Eilich has a monster in her chest that may be the cause of the apocalypses she's able to create. She thinks that Thayer might've left Wrenfare to her, but who's to know.
The way the book ended was also really strong in my opinion. Many questions were left unanswered, but I think it was on purpose. Does Arthur win his reelection? Does Meredith go to prison for fraud? It's all up to the reader's interpretation.
Oh man do I wish I loved and was loved by someone the way Jamie and Meredith love each other. Their chapter made me cry.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an (extensive) honest review.

I can never figure out how I feel after an Olivie Blake book, but in a good way? While this book didn't have much of a plot, in terms of linear this then this then this, it followed three siblings, absent of a father's love, as they deal with his death and think about their own lives as they are in the in-between of death and the reading of his will, which will determine who inherits the billion-dollar company he started. Each character is dealing with their own problems, and we see that executed throughout the book in a fun narration, which was maybe my favorite part of the book. There are also some casual magic/tech elements, and of course Blake's unique writing style makes this an entertaining and insightful read.

Thank you to Net Galley, Olivie Blake, and Tor Books for the ARC!

I have loved all of Olivie Blake's books so far, and this one is no exception. It took a little while to get into especially with the different POVs. I had to orient myself, but I liked the the way things were unraveled and flowed together. After the beginning, everything was rapid fire. The Wren children are viciously ambitious and thrust into family dynamics and power struggles.

Overall, I enjoyed this book a lot, but I also am a huge fan of Olivie Blake's work. The magic was interesting but fell a little flatter than the Atlas novels but no spoilers for the plot twist!

This pains me to write as Olivie Blake is one of my favorite authors, but this book is my least favorite of hers. Firstly, it was entirely too long. I found myself constantly checking the page number and wishing it were over sooner. I realize the characters are meant to be insufferable, however having these characters be the exact same with no growth until the last 10% of the book felt so unsatisfying. Alone with you in the Ether had the most insufferable main characters, yet I was still able to root for them because they were written so well. There wasn’t a single character I was rooting for and that was the downfall of this book. I also did not understand the magical realism of this book. It felt rushed and not fleshed out. Blake’s Masters of Death does a way better job of magical realism in the real world. Ultimately, I wouldn’t recommend this book and think Blake has SO many other amazing works. This book fell so flat for me and took me weeks to finish when most books take me 2-4 days. Because I do love Olivie Blake, I don’t want to post a negative review on my social media platforms and will only leave my Goodreads review attached.

I feel like I'm kind of at a loss for how to rate this book, and I keep waffling between 3 and 4 stars, but because there are no half stars I think I've settled on 3, although it's technically more like 3.5. This isn't necessarily a bad book, and there are certainly elements of it that I really liked, but I just feel like there was too much going on. I think I read somewhere that this was like a family drama with magic, and honestly, yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it was, but I think I was expecting it to be a little more. It takes place over the course of like...a week? Maybe not even that long, and basically just follows the reading of the will of a rich dude and the drama between his three adult kids. But they each have magic. No explanation is really given for the magic, there's a super weird "twist" in there with "God", and the plot is basically nonexistent. I'm sure some people will really enjoy this book, because the writing at times is pretty spectacular, but for me this one was more miss than hit. There were too many sub plots going on here, and the drama was just...it was too much for me. That's not to say there were not good things about this book. Like I said, there were some really beautiful passages, I'm just not sure that overall it made up for everything else. Perhaps this is a book that I would appreciate more on a re-read, and seeing as I'll probably end up with a copy thanks to a book box I might get around to doing that at some point, but at this point in time I'm not really sure that I'll be hand selling this at work. I'll still be curious to see what Blake comes up with next though.

4.5 stars Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!

“All of this sitting around and talking, it was such a waste of time, unless you considered time to be an accumulation of moments you’d rather die than go without.”

Wow. Well. *Clears throat* This was my first voyage into the traditionally published work of Olivie Blake and wow is my brain soup right now!! But like, the most delicious soup!

First, I was excited. Then, I was intimidated. And then…. I was utterly consumed. The book can be overwhelming at first. It wasn’t the tone I expected, or honestly even the genre. But I think it did what it meant to do brilliantly!

You have 3 siblings, all with different experiences and relationships with their father, who is now dead, brought together by a very dysfunctional often toxic family reunion.

This book is SMART and FUNNY and COMPLEX! If you don’t do well with complicated characters, those that are not handfed to you as perfect likeable beings? You might struggle with this one. Every character here is vulnerable, and annoying, and hilarious, and difficult, and deeply human! GAH I CAN’T BELIEVE I WILL NEVER READ THIS FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN!

I know people will hate on my girl Meredith but that is My Girl!!! Yes, she is flawed. Yes, she is selfish… and harsh and sometimes mean and often, as the narrator reminds us, a HUGE ASSHOLE. But she’s MY asshole, and I adore her.

Olivie Blake becomes an auto-buy author with just this one book. I want a physical copy more than I need my next breath. Publisher hmu <3

This was really long. In the acknowledgments Olivie Blake mentioned that Seanan McGuire once pointed out that audiences more readily accept a family or friend group ensemble with more men in it than women so she intentionally did not do that here, and I appreciate that.

I love Olivie Blake, and this was no exception. She takes all of the raw energy that she brings to all of her books and hones it into a beautifully human story about family and expectations while creating a world so vibrant and original. A must read.

HUGE thank you to Tor Publishing Group, Olivie Blake and to NetGalley for this Advanced Reader Copy. All the below thoughts are completely my own.

Ok, I was not expecting this to be this LONG. Not in a dragging way, but in a wow, we are really marinating in this family’s dysfunction kind of way. But then, I finished it and immediately missed these a-holes (narrator’s words, not mine… but also kind of mine).

The focus was on three intelligent, supernaturally gifted siblings fighting over their dead father’s empire while battling their own crises. Meredith, the perfectionist eldest who may or may not have “cured” mental illness (big quotes on that one). Arthur, the political golden boy whose life is crumbling faster than his re-election campaign. And Eilidh, the former ballerina who’s desperate to prove she was her father’s favorite. None of them should be likable, and yet, Olivie Blake made me care. How annoying. Also, the side characters were the cherry on top, legitimately making me feel like I was in the room with all of them demolishing my popcorn.

The sarcastic humor. Immaculate. I laughed out loud multiple times, mainly at the hilarious nicknames the siblings gave to each other. And then there’s the narrator’s thoughts which were so eerily similar to my own that I had a slight existential crisis of my own. If I were narrating this book, I would have said and done the exact same things. Which means either Olivie Blake is psychic, or I am a deeply flawed character in my own novel. Unclear which is worse. (I blame my inability to control my intrusive thoughts. )

At the end of the day, this incredible book is about three deeply messed-up people who just want to be loved, to be seen, and to be a “Wren” which, after finishing, I kind of want too. (No shame)
Essentially, I WANT MORE.

Olivie Blake has done it again! Blake has a way with words that is truly poetic (dare I say, a modern day Shakespeare?). Her writing makes me fall in love with words every time and Gifted and Talented was no exception. Blake writes visceral, raw characters that you want to love, but still kind of hate. You can tell she truly loves every character she writes, with not one member of this cast standing out as the "main character". This book made me laugh out loud, and was, in some ways, utterly relatable (no I am not a billionaire with daddy issues). I would recommend this book with my whole chest and I will be spending the rest of my evening trying not to psychoanalyze myself based off of the character I related to the most.

DNF @ 34%, about 6.5 hours into the audiobook!

I don’t necessarily think this is a “bad” book I think it’s just not for me.

I was 6+ hours into this 19 hour audiobook and still knew nothing more than was already said in the synopsis so my attention was fading. This is a VERY character driven book, which I don’t mind, but none of these characters are likable so that’s…unfortunate.

I went ahead and read a handful+ of reviews and there are some that love it! But enough mentioned that the characters never grow, the magic is never explained (which I was already questioning), and it turns heavy into parenthood in the second half which for me currently is a no go.

If I decide to later revisit this book I will come back and update this review.