Discover Well-Read Black Girl Books and the projects reshaping publishing →

Book Summary and Reviews of Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake

Gifted & Talented

by Olivie Blake

  • Published:
  • Apr 2025, 496 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

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?

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Succession gets the dark fantasy treatment in this riveting standalone from bestseller Blake… It's just the kind of deliciously toxic interpersonal miasma that Blake's fans have come to expect." ―Publishers Weekly

"Told with Blake's signature wit and driven by a cast of morally gray characters you will hate to love and love to hate, Gifted & Talented is equal parts black comedy, sharp indictment of privilege and power, and soaring, vicious drama. Addictively entertaining, this is Blake at the height of her abilities." ―Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Lady Macbeth

"Incisive, unsparing, and utterly brilliant. Gifted & Talented is a remarkable character study meditating on the consequences of dynasty and power. Olivie Blake's storytelling has risen to empyrean heights." ―Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Longings

This information about Gifted & Talented was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Olivie Blake

Olivie Blake is the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, Alone with You in the Ether, One for My Enemy, Masters of Death, Januaries, and Gifted & Talented. As Alexene Farol Follmuth, she is also the author of the young adult rom-coms Twelfth Knight and My Mechanical Romance. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, goblin prince / toddler, and rescue pit bull.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Gifted & Talented, try these:

  • Long After We Are Gone jacket

    Long After We Are Gone

    by Terah Shelton. Harris

    Published 2024

    About this book

    An explosive and emotional story of four siblings―each fighting their own personal battle―who return home in the wake of their father's death in order to save their family's home from being sold out from under them, from the author of One Summer in Savannah.

  • The Story of Arthur Truluv jacket

    The Story of Arthur Truluv

    by Elizabeth Berg

    Published 2018

    About this book

    An emotionally powerful novel about three people who each lose the one they love most, only to find second chances where they least expect them—from New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg.

  • Harmony jacket

    Harmony

    by Carolyn Parkhurst

    Published 2017

    About this book

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dogs of Babel, a taut, emotionally wrenching story of how a seemingly "normal" family could become desperate enough to leave everything behind and move to a "family camp" in New Hampshire - a life-changing experience that alters them forever.

We have 10 read-alikes for Gifted & Talented, but non-members are limited to three results. Join free to see the complete list of recommendations.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

More Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History

Browse all Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History books

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!
Win This Book
Win Theo of Golden

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

One spring morning, a stranger arrives in the small southern city of Golden. No one knows where he has come from…or why…

Enter

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
Two women on opposite sides of the law team up to bring down gangster Lucky Luciano in this gripping novel.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket
    Feast
    by Catherine Kurtz
    In 19th-century France, a girl with a magical taste becomes a duc’s poison taster amid nobility and danger.
  • Book Jacket
    The Reimagining of Thornwood House
    by Jaleigh Johnson
    A witch and her ward discover a magical walking house and find the true meaning of home.
  • Book Jacket
    Somebody Worth Killing
    by Jessica Payne
    Meet Nadia Davis, loving mom, devoted wife, secret assassin… and she needs a babysitter.
  • Book Jacket
    Summer's Never Over
    by Darby Bozeman
    A woman revisits a Southern summer camp where a counselor's death may not have been an accident.
Book
Trivia
  • Book Trivia

    Can you name the title?

    Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

The C is A R

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.