Name: cee 's review of Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake
Item: Gifted & Talented
Rating: 4
Author: cee

Olivie Blake

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes the story of three siblings who, upon the death of their father, are forced to reckon with their long-festering rivalries, dangerous abilities, and the crushing weight of all their unrealized adolescent potential.

Where there’s a will, there’s a war. 

Thayer Wren, the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology, is dead. Any one of his three telepathically and electrokinetically gifted children would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne.

Or at least, so they like to think.

Meredith, textbook accomplished eldest daughter and the head of her own groundbreaking biotech company, has recently cured mental illness. You're welcome! If only her father's fortune wasn't her last hope for keeping her journalist ex-boyfriend from exposing what she really is: a total fraud.

Arthur, second-youngest congressman in history, fights the good fight every day of his life. And yet, his wife might be leaving him, and he's losing his re-election campaign. But his dead father’s approval in the form of a seat on the Wrenfare throne might just turn his sinking ship around.

Eilidh, once the world's most famous ballerina, has spent the last five years as a run-of-the-mill marketing executive at her father’s company after a life-altering injury put an end to her prodigious career. She might be lacking in accolades compared to her siblings, but if her father left her everything, it would finally validate her worth—by confirming she'd been his favorite all along.

On the pipeline of gifted kid to clinically depressed adult, nobody wins—but which Wren will come out on top?


Gifted & Talented

Laura Dobie

It’s not enough to leave enrichment in the child’s enclosure.

‘I’m not a sociopath,’ Meredith pointed out. ‘If anything, I’m a psychopath.’

‘No, you’re capable of empathy,’ said Jamie. ‘That’s what makes it all the more insane.’

Emily McMeans

“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.”

cee 

How do you express to someone that you didn’t necessarily love them when you said so at first but now, years later, after you have already made it perfectly acceptable for him to love other people because you said you didn’t need it, that now you want him to devote himself to you on bended knee? Not even, and that was worse! She didn’t need anything from him! She was completely content to love him this way, heartsickly, for the rest of her life and it made her gag, she retched into her palms, the police officer looked alarmed and Yves was negotiating from the passenger side as if over the crimes of a terrorist and Gillian didn’t care. She loved her husband so much she was physically in pain, how could anything else possibly matter?

"First born sons? You're saying that multiple millennia has passed, and we're still gendering the apocalypse?"

She longed for the shorthand of sex. There was so much that could be telegraphed with contact and motion that she could never—would never—say out loud.

Those people and their relationships were not interesting or fun or enterntaining enough for this book to be this long. I liked the idea; the satire just did not quite work in drawing me in, and I am not 100% convinced the magical element was needed.

As a side note, it is a shame that this is pitched as "Succession"-adjacent as it is more about former gifted nepo babies (a topic that on its own can be equally as compelling as it can be just annoying (like, get over yourself!)) than generational trauma and cutthroat competition for success / daddy's legacy / daddy's love. They are just not for the same audiences if those audiences care about tone and execution of ideas.

Those people and their relationships were not interesting or fun or enterntaining enough for this book to be this long. I liked the idea; the satire just did not quite work in drawing me in, and I am not 100% convinced the magical element was needed.

As a side note, it is a shame that this is pitched as "Succession"-adjacent as it is more about former gifted nepo babies (a topic that on its own can be equally as compelling as it can be just annoying (like, get over yourself!)) than generational trauma and cutthroat competition for success / daddy's legacy / daddy's love. They are just not for the same audiences if those audiences care about tone and execution of ideas.

Hannah Bateman

If Olivie Blake has no fans, then only the blind and unfeeling walk amongst you. 

I have to first talk about the narration. Obviously. For those unfamiliar with Olivie Blake’s work, this can be jarring. And it doesn’t work for everyone, when I read Brandon Sanderson’s ‘Tress of the Emerald Sea’ I had a strong dislike for the narrative voice that turned out the same way that G&T did, but Olivie 

 it. Sure, you may not want four introspective quips on mortality and the elusiveness of happiness followed by internet slang, but I do. More than that, I need it. And whenever I am reading her works (the same happens when I read Jane Austen, though in all other regards many may reject the comparison) I speak more eloquently, I think incisively about what I’m saying and feel able to articulate my thoughts and feelings into words that will resonate them true in who I am speaking too. That, I feel is the strength in her style, her prose, the characters are deeply human and (for me, in external ways) bring the reader into communion with their own stories. 

The story of the Wrens, well it was phenomenal. Such varied malaises and psychological conditions that you can tell each was molded from clay with detailed love. The secondary characters too, with complex inner worlds, needs and flaws. They came together to talk about privilege, and where privilege leaves off. How systemic suffering is always worse, because it is unjustified, but also how it is not the only suffering. It’s about shitty dads for sure, and mothers who fall victim to worrying about society and their own image that they cannot be a mother, and more potently it is about a mother who would turn her back on everything for her child, even if she would leave him in the backseat of a car with a criminal. It is a story of failure, in the way that it is about how the Gifted and the Talented are, more than any adjective, human. Mortal, fragile, emotional, and fallible. 

I will always have so many thoughts on this story, which is contained in just days but has so many more stories within it. In its wake, this is what I think of it. Well, all that is above and that I need more from her, now, or better, yesterday.

If Olivie Blake has no fans, then only the blind and unfeeling walk amongst you. 

I have to first talk about the narration. Obviously. For those unfamiliar with Olivie Blake’s work, this can be jarring. And it doesn’t work for everyone, when I read Brandon Sanderson’s ‘Tress of the Emerald Sea’ I had a strong dislike for the narrative voice that turned out the same way that G&T did, but Olivie gets it. Sure, you may not want four introspective quips on mortality and the elusiveness of happiness followed by internet slang, but I do. More than that, I need it. And whenever I am reading her works (the same happens when I read Jane Austen, though in all other regards many may reject the comparison) I speak more eloquently, I think incisively about what I’m saying and feel able to articulate my thoughts and feelings into words that will resonate them true in who I am speaking too. That, I feel is the strength in her style, her prose, the characters are deeply human and (for me, in external ways) bring the reader into communion with their own stories. 

The story of the Wrens, well it was phenomenal. Such varied malaises and psychological conditions that you can tell each was molded from clay with detailed love. The secondary characters too, with complex inner worlds, needs and flaws. They came together to talk about privilege, and where privilege leaves off. How systemic suffering is always worse, because it is unjustified, but also how it is not the only suffering. It’s about shitty dads for sure, and mothers who fall victim to worrying about society and their own image that they cannot be a mother, and more potently it is about a mother who would turn her back on everything for her child, even if she would leave him in the backseat of a car with a criminal. It is a story of failure, in the way that it is about how the Gifted and the Talented are, more than any adjective, human. Mortal, fragile, emotional, and fallible. 

I will always have so many thoughts on this story, which is contained in just days but has so many more stories within it. In its wake, this is what I think of it. Well, all that is above and that I need more from her, now, or better, yesterday.

Far enough in to say that this is Olivie Blake's most funny, most heartening, most insufferable-yet-loveable novel yet. Being able to witness the growth of an author is an incredible treasure, and this feels like an incredible redeemer after the way the Atlas trilogy ended. I keep pausing at points to laugh, like, full body laugh, and there are so many lines that I've written down or made mental note of.

I do often forget that this book has magical elements, and I think that it could've been woven in a little more intricately, but that could also be consequence of reading via audiobook rather than reading the pre-ordered B&N copy sitting in my car. 

All in all, I'm excited to see where this book leads me. Her handle on writing many moving parts, complicated and intricate interpersonal dynamics, and different kinds of love (maternal, paternal, romantic, platonic) shines so strong and has a strong handle on its through line about expectations placed on the shoulders of adolescents and harsh, rib-cracking realities. 

Edit: well i'm gonna just lie down on the floor and sob

Far enough in to say that this is Olivie Blake's most funny, most heartening, most insufferable-yet-loveable novel yet. Being able to witness the growth of an author is an incredible treasure, and this feels like an incredible redeemer after the way the Atlas trilogy ended. I keep pausing at points to laugh, like, full body laugh, and there are so many lines that I've written down or made mental note of.

I do often forget that this book has magical elements, and I think that it could've been woven in a little more intricately, but that could also be consequence of reading via audiobook rather than reading the pre-ordered B&N copy sitting in my car. 

All in all, I'm excited to see where this book leads me. Her handle on writing many moving parts, complicated and intricate interpersonal dynamics, and different kinds of love (maternal, paternal, romantic, platonic) shines so strong and has a strong handle on its through line about expectations placed on the shoulders of adolescents and harsh, rib-cracking realities. 

Edit: well i'm gonna just lie down on the floor and sob

cee &
Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake

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Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake