unfortunately this was a dnf for me. alone with you in the ether is one of my favorite books of all time but lately olivie blake has just not done it for me. this one ended up disappointing me right off the bat.

When the wealthy CEO of Wrenfare Magitech suddenly passes, he leaves his three magically gifted children in flux. Any one of them could be selected as the inheritor of the company, and each of them want it for completely different reasons.

No one writes super complicated, deeply flawed, but weirdly endearing characters quite like Olivie Blake. The narration was done in such an interesting way, and I found it intriguing.

As with all of Blake's books, this was beautifully written. I always find myself having to slow down and really absorb her words. She writes in a way that is addictive and draws you straight in to the action.

The magic aspects of this book were present without being overshadowning of the human complexities that are really the star of the show. I'm still have a lot of questions about the magic system to be honest, but I'm not that mad about it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for the ARC!

Gifted & Talented" by Olivie Blake is a sharp and insightful novel that delves into the complexities of privilege, ambition, and the cutthroat world of elite education. This engaging and thought-provoking read follows a group of students at a prestigious boarding school as they navigate the challenges of adolescence, academic pressure, and their own dark secrets.

Dysfunctional sibling dynamics? Corporate chaos? Childhood trauma and the crushing weight of expectations? This book has all this and more in an utterly messy, character-driven story that had me deeply invested.

Three siblings gathering for the funeral of their father, Thayer Wren, the genius CEO of Wrenfare Magitech. Meredith, the eldest, is the overachieving, perfectionist daughter who always strives to prove herself. Arthur, the middle child, is the youngest congressman in history and a people pleaser. And then there’s Eilidh, the youngest, a former star ballerina turned marketing executive who is often overlooked and underestimated. With their father gone, the question remains, who will inherit his empire, and at what cost?

This book was absolute chaos. Messy, intricate, and deeply character-driven, I felt like I was simply along for the ride. These siblings are not what you’d call “likable” characters, but by the time I reached the 60% mark, I found myself sympathizing with their struggles in a way I never expected. Their dynamic with each other was easily my favourite aspect of the book, the banter, the raw emotions, the buried resentment, and unexpected humour were all there.

Now, where does Gifted & Talented rank in my Olivie Blake collection? Honestly, I have no idea. One for My Enemy is still top tier for me, but this book was so different in tone and style. It took me a while to get into, but once I did, I found myself oddly attached to these deeply flawed characters.

The story is told through five different POVs, three of which belong to the siblings. The other two? I won’t spoil it; you’ll just have to read and find out. Some perspectives were easier to follow than others, Eilidh’s, in particular, had me struggling at times (maybe that’s just my inner Meredith coming out because I could not stand her in the first half of the book lol). But in the end, they all grew on me.

But most of all I enjoyed the deeper meaning that the story was trying to bring across. The expectations and childhood trauma that shape the way we are today as adults. The weight and struggle of having to live up to other people’s expectations and wanting to prove oneself. The fear of failure. The crushing desire to be successful, to make something of oneself. The relentless desire to seek out validation could very well be our demise.

It’s not an easy read, nor is it meant to be, but it’s one that will resonate deeply with those who have ever felt the pressure to be gifted & talented themselves.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book was witty and dark and oh so perfect.

Olivie Blake is a master of these types of troubled characters that are victims of dare I say, their own circumstances. This is a story of a family of three siblings, raised in a wealthy household that are held to standards of greatness and excellence. When their father, and ceo of the biggest magictech company in the world suddently dies, they are forced to face how little they still knew about him, while wondering what would happen next.

Seriously could not put this down, it’s bingeable and so entertaining, I loved all these characters and their frustrating actions made me love them even more. I can’t begin to explain how much I loved it!

I recommend this book for honestly everyone I cannot wait to read it all again and continue to learn about these characters.

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake is a chaotic sibling story, in the style of Succession. I’ve liked the Atlas series by this author but this one was not for me. It had an odd type of writing and narration style, which seemed specific to this book as I don’t remember it in the authors prior books.

The main siblings are Arthur, Meredith and Eilidh with a cast of supporting players all around. A narrator using first person is revealed about 60% in which is just confusing. Are they god or this other character?

Honestly there was just a lot of the detail and superfluous words I just skipped by as they made no big change to the story. The characters were pretentious and unlikeable, but not in a way you’re supposed to be on their side. Lots of detail but the people feel flat; the most interesting in the story are Gillian and Yves.

Sadly this was a miss for me but thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I adore Olivie Blake so I was excited for this one, but unfortunately it didn't work for me. She typically writes insufferable characters that I love but these characters were a bit too insufferable for me. I do think others will enjoy this though!

BOOK OF THE YEAR!!! I cannot even begin to explain how much I LOVED this book. Being an Olivie Blake stan, ranking her books is so difficult but I feel pretty confident after this initial read that Gifted and Talented is now my favorite Olivie book (even beating out Alone With You in the Ether??). The writing in this book was as usual, so intelligent, sophisticated, in your face, beautiful language and phrases flowing together, all reflecting what it means to be a human. These characters and Olivie's writing in G&T really made me think about what it means to be happy and our eternal quest to find happiness throughout our life.

Gifted and Talented follows three siblings who have just discovered that their father, a very famous, prestigious business owner and tech billionaire has suddenly passed away. And so the story begins - who did he leave the shares of his company and his wealth to?? Each sibling represents very different emotions and personalities.

Meredith is the eldest child/daughter. She is ruthless, ambitious, cut throat, and will do anything to land on top. She designed an app that claims to responsible for curing more people of their depression and mental illnesses than antidepressants, as her app fixes things in your brain to make you happy. Meredith has struggled her whole life with the death of her mother at a young age, her struggle to make her father accept her and want to support her creative ideas, and her desire to be happy. She will do ANYTHING to make her business succeed.

Arthur is the classic middle child. Forgotten by his father, often pushed to the side when you consider the Wren children, a budding politician who seems to have reached the end of his political career at the end of his first term. He so desperately wants to help people and use his money and power to make positive changes but has quickly learned how useless it can feel being a politician. He is struggling with his marriage and where his love and affections lie.

And then there is Elidith, the youngest daughter. After suffering a traumatic, career ending injury at a young age, after being one of the most promising professional ballerinas, Elidith has floated through life, lost. She has lost her passion for her sport and the creativity and purpose dance gave her. She is the most connected with her father, but feels estranged and isolated from her siblings and the relationships she so desperately craves.

Gifted and Talented is a commentary and dialogue on so many things. The current state of the world, how it can feel like screaming into the void, with little power or ability to change anything even when the world feels like it is crumbling around you. The power dynamics of being a badass ambitious women in a male dominated industry. The constant struggle to find happiness and keep it and the lengths we as humans will go to in order to achieve some level of happiness. The desire to survive life and its horrors but not just that, to find moments of happiness that sustain us and people we love to encourage us forward. The Wren siblings are as always, morally grey, deeply flawed characters. But they also are three people, three children, who have lost themselves in their careers and plans and find a way to slowly knit back together.

I honestly think this is Olivie's best work, the most timely writing, and something that so many people are going to be able to relate to. I cannot wait to discuss these characters and the themes in this book when it releases April 1st and to shout my love for this book from the roof!! Thank you THANK YOU Tor Books for making me the happiest girl in the world and sending me this free book!!

I mean, the art work on the cover alone is beautiful but the story inside is too ! I can't wait for others to read this too.

This book was kind of fun to jump into. I didn't know what was happening, it felt super chaotic, but I loved it all the same? Olivie Blake isn't my usual cup of tea, but I absolutely loved this book, it was interesting, fun, and felt different from other things Olivie has recently published!

While the premise was nice, the writing was... not what I expected. I wanted more from the characters because I felt that what was on the front cover and the front flap was not what we were given.

Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for the eARC of Gifted & Talented in exchange for my honest review!

Unfortunately, I didn’t love this one! Olivie Blake always seems to be hit or miss for me but the premise of this one sounded too good to pass up. I found that the characters were too pretentious and unlikable to want to continue reading. And with as long as the book is, it did make for an experience that just wasn’t enjoyable.

I do think fans of Blake’s writing will really find a lot to love about this one because it does have a lot of her common themes. It just didn’t work for me!

Olivie Blake does some interesting things with magic in her novels and yet it always falls flat for me. Gifted & Talented is sadly not an exception. Focused on the Ren siblings in the days after their father dies and they need to learn who inherits the family empire, the novel deals with their complicated relationships and their magical talents. I did like the framing of the narration - that was fun - and there were certainly good parts but this didn’t come together for me.

Olivie Blake is always great with writing characters and relationships. This is one thing the book does really well. It’s the plot that falls short. It is not strong enough to carry an almost 500 page book of basically just character introspection. While there were parts that entertained me, there was also many areas where the story dragged a little. I did have parts where I felt for the characters, but the plot just did not keep me enthralled. Overall, while the characters and their relationships with each other were very interesting, there was too little happening in the plot for me personally.

This book is a classic family drama story and rich people life issues but I did eat it up and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Gifted & Talented is an indulgent, pretentious book about a cast of unlikeable hot messes. I also enjoyed it a lot. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. For any Blake fans, the vibes reminded me more of Masters of Death versus Atlas Six.

The book centers on three siblings dealing with the fallout from their father’s death: Meredith the oldest, a tech start-up owner and stone cold bitch; Arthur, the youngest congressman ever who’s about to lose his reelection campaign; and Eilidh, a former ballet dancer turned marketing exec and permanent ingénue. All three have mysterious magical powers that have impacted their lives, but the main question of the book is which sibling will inherit their father’s business (their father being a sort of Jeff Bezos). Surrounding the trio are a host of secondary characters who often steal the show like Jamie, Meredith’s ex-boyfriend turned investigative reporter who’s about to release an article that will destroy her business; Gillian, Arthur’s scarily competent wife; and Yves, world famous racecar driver, drug dispenser, and one of Arthur’s lovers.

This is one of those books in which you just have to acknowledge this is about the characters and not the plot and then just enjoy the ride. Curiously, there’s fairly little character growth per se, but what a collection of character studies. It’s genuinely mesmerizing.

If there’s a true flaw, it’s the world building. This is a world in which magic exists at some public level (hence being able to study ‘magitech’ in college), but magic doesn’t appear to broadly be in use. Unless this is intended as a commentary on sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, I think nearly everything could have simply been waved away as near future technology. On a related note, the siblings all have unexplained magical powers that they feel pressure to hide for reasons never addressed. I honestly wonder if this was an entirely non-fantastical story that was later edited to include magic.

I also wouldn’t have minded another round of editing. The overwritten bits are charming for the most part (e.g. describing a location as an “unethically verdant”) but they often made me roll my eyes (e.g. “All that remained was the prepubescent angst of someone discovering his penis amid the dulcet sympathies of malaising pop-punk.”).

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake is basically what happens when you throw a bunch of insufferably intelligent, emotionally stunted academics into a blender with yearning, ambition, and just a sprinkle of existential crisis. And I ate it up like the dark academia gremlin I am.

This book is like if The Secret History and Conversations with Friends had a messy, brilliant love child raised by Tumblr-era philosophy discourse. It’s filled with razor-sharp dialogue, characters who desperately need therapy but would rather intellectualize their trauma, and the kind of pretentious academic drama that makes you feel like you, too, should be brooding in a dimly lit library, nursing a very strong coffee.

TL;DR: If you love reading about gifted burnout, self-destructive geniuses in love, and the thin line between ambition and total emotional collapse—congrats, this one’s for you.

At various points in Gifted & Talented, I fell in and out of love. Throughout Gifted & Talented is a story about family. It's a family drama about sibling rivalries and the complex feelings of a person after their death. Do we only remember their success? Or is a better picture of them also representative of their mistakes, the conversations we wish we had, and the people we wished they were? Family is full of expectations. And the hard reality is that the person we are with them is different than the person we are with our partners, our siblings, ourselves.

In Gifted & Talented, Olivie Blake presents a gripping tale of family dynamics and the complexities of inherited power following the death of the formidable Thayer Wren, CEO of Wrenfare Magitech. As his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children grapple with their father's legacy, they are confronted with long-standing rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the weight of unrealized potential.

Each sibling believes they are the rightful heir to their father's empire. Meredith, the accomplished eldest daughter and head of a biotech company, has a successful track record of curing mental illness, but she harbors her own insecurities, fearing exposure as a fraud. Meanwhile, Arthur, the ambitious congressman, struggles to maintain his political career amid personal turmoil and yearns for his father's approval, which he believes a seat on the Wrenfare throne could provide.

Eilidh, the youngest sibling once celebrated as a ballet prodigy, now feels overshadowed in a corporate world after a life-altering injury. Her desire for validation leads her to hope that inheriting everything from their father could prove she was his favorite all along.

Gifted & Talented weaves a tension-filled narrative that explores the psychological toll of competition and the search for identity within a fractured family unit. With beautifully crafted characters and a riveting plot, Blake effectively captures the struggles of gifted individuals navigating the complexities of love, ambition, and sibling ties. As each sibling faces their demons and seeks to prove themselves, readers are left wondering who will ultimately emerge victorious in this high-stakes battle for power and acceptance.

I enjoyed parts of this book—no one does character work quite like Olivie Blake. Gifted & Talented follows three siblings with unnatural abilities as they navigate the fallout of their father’s death, forced to reconcile their inheritance with their complicated personal lives.

As expected, Blake’s signature prose is all over this book. Her writing style isn’t for everyone, but under the right circumstances, I really enjoy it. It’s sharp, witty, and full of interesting observations that breathe life into the Wren siblings. Blake thrives on writing rich, pretentious, and vaguely insufferable characters—the kind you can’t help but be fascinated by, like peeking behind the curtain of a world you’d never belong to.

That said, my biggest issue with this book is the pacing. For a story that takes place over just a few days, it’s far too long. A solid 100 pages could have been cut, and it wouldn’t have impacted the plot at all. There were moments I was fully engaged, but there were just as many where the story dragged. The slower pacing wouldn’t have been a problem if the character development had been strong enough to carry it, but unfortunately, I don’t think it quite got there.

Overall, I find Blake’s books to be hit or miss, and this one landed solidly in the middle for me. There were aspects I really enjoyed, but getting through it felt like a bit of a slog. If you love her writing style and don’t mind a slower, more introspective story, you might enjoy this more than I did!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the advance copy.