dnf-ed at 15%

I really tried my best to like it, but I just couldn't.

The beginning was incredibly slow and at the point that I decided that I will not continue, we still haven't gotten past the exposition. The plot is still being set up and I felt like there was a lot of info dumping that wasn't necessary and we could have learned these things later on as the plot progressed rather than throwing everything in the beginning. It made the book feel even slower.

After the 15% mark, I'm still not fully what the plot is supposed to be either. Like yes, I read the synopsis, I can tell because of it where we are getting, but I should have at least in idea now from the book too and I do not.

I can't say I feel any attachment to the characters either. They are supposed to be flawed but there's a different between flawed and absolutely horrible. And they fit in the second category in my opinion. I'm a huge fan of character driven books and I simply need to have a connection with the characters to actually like a story. And here, this is not the case.

I could see why other people could enjoy this book, but as of now, I don't think this one is for me and if you think we have similar taste in books, this might not be for you either.

I unfortunately did struggled with this book especially at the start of this book.
I found that it took a good while to actually get into the book and found that the pacing of the book was pretty slow.
Once I got a good chunk into the book it did pick up and I enjoyed the story after that.
The book synopsis was so intriguing and I loved it.
I’ve read several books from this author before and really enjoyed them but unfortunately this one whilst ok wasn’t a favourite.

Olivie Blake's writing remains a masterclass in emotional complexity, and Gifted & Talented is no exception. This is less about plot and more about pressure — the kind that starts in childhood and calcifies into adulthood. The prose walks a tightrope between brilliant and indulgent, but it works because the characters are just as unhinged. If you’ve ever wrestled with the weight of expectations or the loneliness of trying to prove your worth, parts of this will hit too close.

The magic is subtle and symbolic rather than front and center, which may surprise some readers, but the real alchemy here is in how Blake dissects ambition, legacy, and the slow rot of privilege. The characters are intentionally difficult. They make terrible choices. They spiral. But they also feel deeply real in the way only Blake's characters can. There were moments I laughed, moments I cringed, and more than one that made me pause to reread a line just to sit with it. This isn’t escapism. It’s confrontation, wrapped in glitter and grief. And I liked it that way.

I wanted to love Gifted & Talented. Really, I did. The concept? Brilliant. Three wildly gifted siblings navigating the messy aftermath of their tech-mogul father’s death? With magic?! Sign me up. But as I turned the pages (and turned, and turned), I kept waiting for the spark that never quite came.

Let’s start with what worked: the premise is rich with potential. The setup practically begs for drama, betrayal, and juicy power plays. It feels like a blend of Succession with a magical twist—except that twist is so faint, you might miss it altogether. I went in expecting telepathy, kinetic showdowns, something deliciously fantastical. But the magic? It barely shows up. It felt like a background detail rather than the beating heart of the story.

And then there’s the pacing. This book is long, and it feels like it. The beginning dragged, and unfortunately, that sense of slowness lingered throughout the whole story. I kept hoping things would pick up, that the stakes would feel sharper or the plot would surprise me. Instead, I found myself trudging through endless internal monologues and boardroom banter, wishing we’d just get to the good stuff.

Now let’s talk characters—because this was another major stumbling block for me. Meredith, Arthur, Eilidh… they’re all flawed in intentionally messy ways, but I never connected with any of them. I can appreciate morally grey, even outright unlikeable, characters when they’re compelling. But in this case, I didn’t relate to them, and I didn’t root for them either. They felt more like archetypes than people, and that emotional distance made the story even harder to engage with.

By the time I reached the end, I just felt… tired. There’s something there, something clever and pointed beneath all the corporate satire and family drama, but it never quite rises above the noise. And without the emotional hook or the magical flair I’d hoped for, it all fell a bit flat.

Final thoughts

If you’re here for sibling drama and dark academia-esque commentary on ambition and failure, you might find something to latch onto. But if you’re looking for magic, momentum, or characters you can love (or love to hate), Gifted & Talented might leave you feeling a little cold. For me, it was a miss.

My first Olivie Blake and honestly? An excellent entry point. Spectacular writing, flawed and brilliant characters, and some truly brilliant moments. My only complaint is that it was billed as Succession meets magic and while it had BIG Succession energy, it was light on magic. Toward the end, it started to drift into a very inward facing, occasionally repetitive, essay on motherhood which didn’t appeal to me, but I understand why given the context the author was writing in. I couldn’t quite rate it five-stars as I wanted more magic (and better explanations for what was going on with the siblings), but it was a mostly satisfying read. Would recommend!

Gifted and Talented is for the millennials that feel the pressure to succeed and people please whilst having crippling anxiety and pretty sub par social skills 😂

Using her usual writing style and satire, Blake creates a family dynamic that focuses on sibling rivalry in a social and tech driven corporate world.

However, I didn’t finish this. This just wasn’t for me. And I love Olivie Blake but I found this one overwritten to the point of exhaustion. After two months I was only 42% finished and so very little had actually happened to progress the story.

Olivie Blake certainly has a unique writing style that intrigues and grips you and admittedly wont be for everyone but there is certainly somtething about the way she captures the ugly in people and yet makes you still find the good in them or want to root for them.

Impossibly wealthy and enittled the three children of Thayer Wren come together when they hear of their fathers death, they're all impacted for different reasons and also are dealing with their own personal life drama and magical glitches. The magic systems /world in this is felt familiar to that of The Atlas Six series in that magic creates and runs business it is for the powerful. it isn't magic for heroes or witches and wizards!

I enjoy Olivie Blake's books but this one wasn't a favourite for me, I felt like there wasn't enough action and the characters were too self entitled., too self involved..they are meant to be, but it just meant there wasn't anyone I particularly liked or cared enough about to care what happened enough.
The story is clever and it is easy enough to follow along and enjoy and will no doubt stick in your head for these characters.

I received this book as an ARC and provide an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Pan Macmillan/Tor for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: death, grief, references to eating disorders, pregnancy, drug use, chronic pain


In a version of the world where magic goes hand in hand with the business, the Wren family are on top. The head, Thayer Wren, the father of modern magical technology and CEO of Wrenfare, is dead. Now his three children- all with unique powers of their own- stand to inherit his fortune and control of Wrenfare. Meredith Wren, the eldest, is a ruthless genius who invented an app that has apparently cured mental illness- but in fact, the entire scheme is a massive fraud and her journalist ex-boyfriend is about to reveal all. Arthur Wren, the only son, is the second youngest congressman in history but his wife is leaving him, he’s about to lose his seat and his relationship with a racing driver and a socialite might lead to fatherhood. Eilidh Wren, the youngest and Thayer’s favourite, was the world’s most famous ballerina until a terrible injury put an end to her career- now she works in marketing for her father’s company, trying to avoid triggering the magic inside of her. With Thayer’s legacy up for grabs, and it not being clear which of the Wrens- who all need it for different reasons- will win the throne, the siblings have to gather and wait for their father’s will to make it clear.

I have genuinely never read a book with characters so messed up as the Wren family. Each of the children are brilliant characters- intelligent, gifted, magical and immensely privileged but they’re all deeply unhappy, unsatisfied and wanting more. The irony of Meredith creating an app to cure mental illness but being so miserable was so well written. I adored the mixture of tension and humour in this book, especially because it comes at moments that in other works would seem unsuitable. I took to Eilidh straight away because her experiences of chronic pain and of once being great and now feeling ‘less’ were so relatable to me but my favourite sibling story by the end was that of Arthur. He is an absolute disaster man throughout the entire book and I loved how his relationships with his wife Gillian (who is the coolest woman ever), Yves and Phillipa all varied and changed throughout the story. Meredith’s ongoing internal conflict with the things she’s done and her past relationships (particularly with her ex- boyfriend and estranged childhood best friend) was so fascinating, she’s genuinely tragic and so uncompromising even when it ruins her life. We never actually meet Thayer properly, he’s gone by the time the book starts, but his memory consistently haunts every single moment of ‘Gifted and Talented’ especially as his children are forced to reconcile their different versions of their father with reality. I was a huge fan of the TV show Succession and this felt like a perfect mixture of that within a world of magic and a slow burn, gradually revealing narrative. I’ve only ever enjoyed one Olivie Blake book before- One For My Enemy- but I loved this so much.

Having read the Atlas Six I know the writers style and was really looking forward to this book. The premise was intriguing with and inheritance on the balance amongst siblings who have some unusual talents.
Unfortunately the pacing of this book was off for me, the story took too long to develop and by halfway through the book I was quite bored. It is unfortunate as I had hoped for better.

Really struggled with the start of this book as I found the pacing to be a bit slow, once into it I loved the characters and the setting
I loved the fact that it crossed genres

Gifted and Talented is a sharp, emotionally layered character study about three siblings who each carry the quiet burden of being raised to succeed—brilliant, accomplished, and deeply shaped by their privilege and parental expectations. What struck me most is how different they are from one another, and yet how clearly they mirror the same internalized pressure to perform.

Olivie Blake continues to prove she's a master of character work. Each sibling is flawed, sometimes frustrating, but always deeply human. You don’t always agree with them, but you understand them—and that’s what makes them so compelling. The dynamics between them are brittle, intimate, and full of the unsaid.

Her writing is, as always, stunning. Poetic without being pretentious, cutting when it needs to be. Every sentence feels considered. The prose alone would have been enough to carry this, but paired with such well-observed emotional depth, it becomes something quietly powerful.

This isn’t an easy read. It doesn’t offer tidy answers or sweeping resolutions. But if you’re drawn to stories that peel back the layers of identity, family, and expectation—it rewards every bit of your attention.

3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️ | 🌶️ 0 Spice
This book is something else, truly unlike anything I have read before, which made it quite difficult to rate.
It was my first time reading Olivie Blake, and her command of language and character construction is absolutely stunning. Despite the short timeline of the story, she manages to dig deep, giving us a complex, intimate look at the Wren family through a detached, godlike narrator who ultimately reveals their own unreliability. The entire narrative is layered with lies, legacy, and corruption, unfolding like a slow-motion car crash you cannot look away from.
I genuinely believe this is the kind of book that could end up on academic reading lists. It is rich with commentary on capitalism, generational wealth, and the rot at the core of privilege. My mind went straight into analytical mode, drawing real-world parallels, unpacking themes, and trying to keep up with the densely packed prose. The vocabulary alone is expansive, sometimes to the point of intellectual overload.
That said, I struggled to enjoy it on an emotional or immersive level fully. While the story is categorised as fantasy, it felt more like a contemporary character study with the lightest touch of magical realism. That mismatch shaped my expectations and left me feeling disconnected from the story.
Gifted and Talented is brilliant in its construction and brave in its commentary, but ultimately it felt more like something to be studied than savoured.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Olivie Blake is an auto-buy author for me, with some of her books being some of the best I've ever read (namely One for my Enemy and Masters of Death). To say I was looking forward to reading this is an understatement.
I loved the premise and, as with all of Olivie's stories, they are always unlike anything else I've ever read. The characters, too, are so well-written and fully-formed that you are likely to feel that you know many of them as intimate friends and you'll be in love with at least one of them (Arthur, for me).
I loved following the three siblings as they navigate life after their father's death and try to cope with their unique 'unnatural' traits (dying temporarily, summoning plagues, you know, the usual). It made me smile, it made me cry, it made me continue to see Olivie Blake as an utterly unique author of fantastic characters and stories. A great read. Thank you Netgalley and Tor for the advance read and thank you, Author Incredible, Olivie Blake, for another brilliant read.

This book was unfortunately not my cup of tea. I liked the concept, the way the book tried to tackle complex sibling dynamics, and the magic system, but I just couldn't get past the pacing. The story began about 50% of the way in, and even then I really struggled to finish this. I wanted to like this book more than I did, I usually love purple prose and I liked Blake's previous work, but unfortunately this was not something I enjoyed.

The family dynamic is a standout—satirical, dysfunctional, a little demented, broken, and impossible to look away from; I truly enjoyed the POVs of each of the siblings in their own different ways.

This is the first Olivie Blake book I've read. It is written in a very unique way and I think that's why it took me so long to read it. It also tookm me a very long time to get into the story.
The fantasy element is kind of there but also not at the same time. The story is fine with or without it.
A forward moving plot is practically non-existent (barely anything happens most of the book), however the story is basically character-driven.

"Where there’s a will, there’s a war." Well, we don't learn about Thayers will until the 80% mark of the book and I don't see any war after that. After reading the synopsis I thought the story would be more centered around that. Unfortunately that's not the case.
There also is a weird switch from 3rd person to 1st person narrative back to 3rd person and 1st person again. As a forgein reader this was the most difficult part (along with the syntax being so complex) because it was unannounced.
Gifted & Talented was not a good fit for me but I can see why others might enjoy this.

This was my first Olivie Blake book and it was not at all what I expected.

I made it about 15% of the way through and skimmed through the rest. I just couldn't do it anymore. The writing style wasn't for me, I felt like we kept going round in circles and were being told about things that were totally irrelevant instead of getting to what was actually happening and moving the story forward. It was the book version of this meeting should've been an email.

The only reason this is getting 2 stars instead of 1 is because of Meredith Wren, who manages to be funny while also being a no nonsense bitch.

I enjoyed this very much, even with the sentences that span a whole page. This was my first read by Olivie Blake and Inmay just be convinced to try out her other works,

Is it really an Olivie Blake book if I'm not confused the whole time I'm reading it? Vibes are immaculate, plot was interesting... writing a wee bit too purple.

As a whole I love Olivie Blake’s writing. She has such a distinct style and humour, I will always pick up something she has written.

However, I both really enjoyed and disliked this book. From chapter to chapter I could go from enthralled to bored and I found it hard to initially get into.

The plot unfortunately moved at such a glacial pace, what felt like a month was actually only a couple of days.

I think it’s fair to say that it was Succession, with a magical element. However, the characters are well formed and interesting in their own right.

Again, there were many things I did enjoy! Just the pacing let it down.