I'm a big fan of Olivie Blake and I saw someone describe this as Succession meets Umbrella Academy and I was sold.
I love an unlikeable character and boy did this book deliver. She sets up the book masterfully from the first chapter and I was hooked. I loved getting to know each of the Wren siblings and without spoilers- I loved the 'magical' element to the family dynamic as well.

Olivie Blake is undeniably a wonderful writer. I love the sophistication of her style and her imaginative story writing.

Unfortunately on a personal taste level, I just couldn’t click with this novel. I just really didn’t care about the characters and if I don’t care about the characters at all then I’m just not going to be invested in the story.

I’m sure lots of people will love the vibes and find the largely unlikeable characters captivating. I just felt irritated.

Unfortunately this file is corrupted as myself and others have reported.

Would love to read it but it's impossible.

Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake completely captivated me with its sharp wit, layered characters, and effortlessly clever dialogue. From the first page, I was drawn into the tangled, often chaotic world of these overachievers, each navigating their own ambitions, insecurities, and relationships in a way that felt painfully real. Blake’s writing is as intelligent as it is emotionally charged, making me laugh one moment and ache the next. The characters’ chemistry crackles with tension, and their interactions feel so authentic that I found myself deeply invested in their successes and failures. It’s a book that lingers in your mind long after you finish, making you question just how much of yourself you see in these flawed, brilliant individuals.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for the advance copy of this book. I really enjoyed this book. It was genuinely very funny at times and I enjoyed each of the in depth character backgrounds. Each character was so complex. I did struggle a little with the slow moving plot but the characters made up for it (for the most part). Overall, a very enjoyable read.

This book is not for me and I don't think this author is for me, unfortunately. The characters felt very one-dimensional.

Along with other readers, I have received a corrupted file which is unreadable but would love to read once it has been sorted as I have high expectations for this one!

Olivie Blake’s most Olivie Blake™ book to date (complimentary.)
I know she may be a hit or miss author for many, but for me she is firmly a hit. I just really vibe with her snarky, witty, super-contemporary-but-not-dated writing style, and even more so when she plays around with the format and narration of a story, which really shines in Gifted and Talented. Here, she explores gifted kid burnout, mental illness, family dysfunction, the intersection of fantasy and technology, classism & poverty, motherhood, and honestly just What It Means To Be Human with such evocative and raw writing.
This one is for the unlikable characters lovers out there!! These siblings are insufferable arseholes!! (No, truly.) But, as a master at her craft, Olivie Blake takes 400 pages and makes you somehow grow to care about them and their Happiness ☺(Even Meredith!)
I didn’t even fathom just how much I was emotionally invested in their sibling relationship until there was a certain scene at the very end which made me want to tear up.
Thank you to Pan Macmillan, Tor Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC. All opinions are my own.

This was ok, but it could have all been over in less than 300 pages, honestly. More on that in a sec.
God, at his(?) wits’ end with the three siblings, makes a wonderfully sarcastic and ambivalent narrator. I really enjoyed his/her/their interjections, which were witty, sharp and to the point. There’s a nice twist involving them, which I’m not going to spoil.
I love the pace, snark and confrontational nature of Blake’s writing. (Great opening line, by the way.) I’m less keen on its elitism. A little more empathy for the reader would go a long way. No one wants to be asking Siri for definitions at the turn of every page.
Examples:
* Qubit
* Purulent
* Ensorceling [stet] - actual spelling: Ensorcelling (the typo is karma for not using a word that even an editor understands).
Also (dare I say, tangentially-which you’ll get, if you make it to the end) a note on sentence length. 69 words is typically considered too long for reading ease. Around 20 is a comfortable average. I found a 78 at one point and threw up my hands in despair.🤷🏼‍♀️ (This did improve as the book progressed.)
While the pace was fast, the plot was not. (As I said, 300 pages would have been about right.) This is primarily a character-based story, with a great deal of indulgent navel gazing and over-thinking on the part of everyone.
There is an underlying plot, but my goodness, it takes its own sweet time coming to fruition. Having said that, I enjoyed the last 25% significantly more than the rest of the book, and the last 5% was ace.
If you’re a die-hard Olivie Blake fan, I’m sure you’ll love the whole thing. I wanted to, really I did. Maybe next time.
Providing there’s a little more action.
And shorter sentences.
For now though, I’m good with adoring the last 5%. So four stars from me, with thanks to Netgalley and Panmacmillan Tor for the review copy.

honesty, it felt like nothing happened for the first 250 pages. things started to pick up after that, but even then it was incredibly slow paced. i don’t mind unreliable narrators or unlikeable characters, but when nothing’s happening besides unnecessary backstory, of course i’m not going to like it.

the magic was really interesting. it was also the only reason i continued to the end — i had questions and i wanted answers. unfortunately, most of those went unanswered, and i was left wondering why i even bothered.

along with the lack of plot, we also have a lack of character development. while meredith goes through some, it wasn’t a lot. i felt arthur and eilidh didn’t change much from beginning to end either. the main redeeming aspect of this book was the side characters. i definitely enjoyed them a lot more than anyone else in this book.

if i had to summarise this book it would be: nothing happened, none of my questions were answered, and i gained nothing from reading this.

i was really excited to read gifted & talented, and was quite disappointed by my lack of enjoyment. i don’t know if this book just went over my head and i missed an integral part of it, but most of the reviews for gifted & talented are raving about how good it was.

Olivie Blake delves into the world of the filthy rich to explore themes of ambition, relationships, (childhood) trauma, and power. She portrays three siblings—Meredith, Arthur, and Eilidh—as they navigate the death of their father, the CEO of a modern tech company.

A lot of people say that this book gives off strong Succession vibes—and that's absolutely true. It's nearly impossible not to compare the Wrens to the Roys, especially considering that not a single character in this book can be called a truly decent human being, which is something that only deepens that comparison. That said, I also think Gifted & Talented bears some similarities to Olivie Blake's earlier work, The Atlas Six trilogy. I don't mean in terms of plot, but in the way the characters interact—you can clearly tell it's the same person behind both works. Since Gifted & Talented features only three main characters, the author had the opportunity to give each of them the attention needed to develop fully realized personalities. (Meredith, by the way, gave me major Parissa vibes). The secondary characters are also well-written and do not feel like mere avatars orbiting around the Wren siblings.

This is a deeply character-driven book, which is typical of Olivie Blake's work. Not much really happens in terms of plot, and you could probably summarize the story in just a few sentences. That said, the narrative remains accessible (which is worth noting, as it's not always the case with this author’s novels), and what we do get is surprisingly fast-paced and engaging. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the book wouldn’t have benefited from being a bit shorter. Still, in my opinion, the greatest success of this novel is that it keeps you invested, even though the characters are entirely unlikable.

This book includes speculative elements, such as the characters' telekinetic abilities, but I’m starting to think they might not have been entirely necessary. They don’t contribute significantly to the plot. In fact, the story could have been just as compelling if it focused on a dysfunctional family of billionaires, with no supernatural abilities at all. After all, money can serve as its own form of superpower.

All in all, reading this novel, I got mostly what I expected. If you enjoy Olivie Blake's prose, family dramas with a touch of humor, and deeply character-driven stories, this book will definitely be for you.

I still am unsure what to rate this book. To accurately review it I'll need to split this into two parts, and if the second part is vague it's because I so desperately am trying not to spoil the book for anyone.

The first 50% of the book? Immaculate. The succession vibes were incredible. The character development was intricate and really well done. This has Olivie's usual style of prose where there are long paragraphs packed with interesting character and plot tidbits. The voice was witty and interesting and provided a really unique perspective to the three Wren siblings.

However... at about the 50% mark it became apparent that book is not about siblinghood but rather about parenthood which was not really what I signed up for. The long interesting paragraphs about our MCs turn into long paragraphs of thinking about motherhood and having a toddler etc and my enjoyment decreased significantly. It felt like this was a book for Olivie to talk about her experience with motherhood and having a son with a character that felt almost like a self insert. This isn't inherently a problem but I didn't enjoy it at all.

So. if part one is a 5 star read and part two is a 2.5 star read, I suppose the only thing is to meet in the middle? We've landed on a 3.5 I suppose?

Thank you to the publisher and to netgalley for the arc!

Olivie Blake’s Gifted & Talented is a sharp, intoxicating blend of familial dysfunction, academic ambition, and the existential dread of unrealized potential—all wrapped in her signature lyrical prose. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when “gifted child burnout” meets Succession-style power struggles (with a dash of magic), this novel answers that question in the most self-destructive and cerebral way possible.

The Wren siblings—Meredith, Arthur, and Eilidh—are deeply flawed, painfully pretentious, and often insufferable in the best possible way. Their father’s death forces them into a high-stakes reckoning with their ambitions, failures, and each other, but their deeply ingrained arrogance and self-sabotage make them difficult protagonists to root for. This isn't a flaw of the book—Blake writes them with surgical precision—but it does mean that your enjoyment may hinge on your tolerance for watching brilliant yet emotionally stunted people unravel in real time.

The novel explores fascinating themes: the weight of expectation, the corrosive nature of parental neglect, and the existential crisis of once being exceptional and now simply… existing. However, the narrative occasionally leans too heavily into its own self-awareness. The introspection can become repetitive, and at times, the story feels more like an extended character study than a fully realized plot. The magical elements, while intriguing, feel more ornamental than essential—less a driving force and more a stylistic flourish that never fully integrates into the novel’s central conflicts.

A significant drawback of the reading experience (at least for the digital ARC) was the formatting issues. The faulty layout made navigation frustrating, disrupting the novel’s flow and making it harder to stay engaged. For early readers, this was a noticeable barrier.

That said, Blake’s prose remains addictive—cutting, poetic, and brimming with philosophical musings. The secondary characters, particularly Yves and Gillian, inject much-needed balance and humanity into the narrative. If you enjoy character-driven stories filled with unlikable yet compelling protagonists and biting satire, Gifted & Talented will deliver. Just be prepared for a story that often revels in its own cleverness, for better or worse.

Another fantastic book from olivie Blake! I have been a fan for many many years and I can tell you I will always pick up a book by this author because I know they will be amazing! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for approving me to read one of my most anticipated reads early.

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this book, but let’s start with the obvious.. Olivie Blake is brilliant and I will happily read anything this author writes.

Gifted & Talented is unique, and at first I couldn’t quite mesh with this style of writing as it’s so different to anything else I’ve read. The story is told by a very unreliable narrator and it feels quite broken or disconnected, and at first I wasn’t vibing with it.

After about 20% I saw the brilliance, the characters and the view point are very unlikeable if we’re being honest, but I found the characters and especially Meredith to be oddly endearing and by the end I was quite emotionally attached to the story and it’s characters, I’m not even sure how I managed to become invested considering again that they are so unlikeable at their core. The message of the story feels obvious but once you reach the end it really sinks in, people are just people and we create our own expectations or interpretations of who we’re supposed to be, well that was my take from it anyway.

Thoroughly enjoyed this and I’m rating it 4.5 stars.

I was so excited to be given this arc and so I am disappointed that I can’t actually read it due to errors in the text (mostly symbols and shapes instead of actual sentences/words) I have contacted Netgalley support about the problem so I hope we can receive an updated file, especially as I see from other reviews that this is a problem other Netgalley users are having.

All of this being said, I wanted to let others know that the publishers have made a small sneak peak of the Kindle edition available on Amazon! This can be found on Olivie Blake’s author page, and includes the first 70ish pages. So I have managed to read a small portion of Gifted & Talented, which has made me really keen to read the entire book. Even from the first chapter, you get such an impressive sense of tone. I love the writing style, as I always do with Olivie Blake. It’s undeniably clever and funny and helps build the character’s personalities so well.

I’m giving this Netgalley review 4 stars purely for the potential I can see. I feel unable to post a review publicly on my Goodreads because I haven't been able to read/finish the book. I will happily update this review (and post on my Goodreads!) if I am given the opportunity to read an updated copy of this book.

Is there anything more entertaining than being thrust into the heart of family drama and witnessing the emotional unraveling of the filthy rich? Probably! Don’t get me wrong—I don’t enjoy watching people suffer (even fictional, wealthy people), but there’s something about it that makes them feel just a bit more relatable. I’ll likely never accumulate the kind of wealth that would make invincibility in the reach of my hand, so seeing the elite wrestle with their very real, very human emotions is definitely fascinating (and quite funny).
If you love satire, character-driven stories, unreliable narrators, and a touch of style-over-substance storytelling, Gifted & Talented is for you. It explores themes of intellectual ambition, messy relationships, identity, and existentialism, all through the lens of the pretentious—yet deeply insecure—Wren siblings: Meredith, Arthur, and Eilidh. They are forced to relive their past and face the consequences, not only their actions, but also their father’s attitude to parenthood. As their complexities unravel, one thing becomes clear: money may make life easier, but when it comes to your emotional stability (which is most likely determined by the type of love you get from your parents) - no amount of wealth, power or magical manipulation can fix it. However, the true stars of the show (in my opinion) are the side characters. They may be meant to linger in the background, but in reality, they shape our perception of the main cast more than anything else. My favorites? Yves and Gillian—and honestly, I wish them nothing but happiness.
Despite enjoying this book, I couldn’t help but feel it was a bit lengthy. At times, reading felt like overthinking—and maybe that was the point, but I really prefer to avoid that as much as possible (overthinking, that is). As for the magic? I wasn’t entirely convinced it had a purpose in the story, but in the end, it felt like a nice, final touch or more likely, the Olivie Blake’s signature.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book!

And another amazing book from Olivie Blake. IMO she can do no wrong!

I love Olivie's writing, it's wonderfully pretentious. She really knows how to write unlikable characters which are incredibly loveable.

It's stated as succession with magic. (But I've never seen succession, it's on my to-do list).

Thayer wren is dead and we are reading about his three children are dealing with the aftermath. They are all awful, for different reasons.( And I mainly blame Thayer for EVERYTHING!)

This book had a great plot with intriguing characters. I’ll definitely be looking out for more from this author.

“nothing is ever the same (affectionate) nothing is ever the same (threat)”

every time i start an Olivie book i tell myself im prepared to see all of the scary dark parts of me explored in beautiful words, and i never really am. there’s just something so deep, so raw about the way this author writes and reflects the human experiences. how she manages the capture the complexities of personhood, the ideas of reaching perfection without knowing what the definition truly is. they’re books that stick with you, books that hurt and change you, books that leave you with a sinking sick feeling in your stomach whilst your eyes fill with tears over the beauty of being seen but also the pain of being seen.

I adored this, it’s definitely became one of my favourites of her works. I think people critique the writing because it can be very patchy, flicking back and forth between narrations and it has an almost .. whimsical writing style? but i simply adore it, and i am so happy to have gotten early access to this.