Gifted & Talented

De: Olivie Blake

Narrado por: Eunice Wong

“Eunice Wong's narration is clear, well paced, and emotionally balanced…This is a thoughtful, slow-burning novel with a narration that complements the complexity of the plot.” — AudioFile

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?

Also by Olivie Blake
The Atlas Six
The Atlas Paradox
The Atlas Complex
Alone with You in the Ether
One for My Enemy
Masters of Death
Januaries: Stories of Love, Magic & Betrayal

As Alexene Farol Follmuth
Twelfth Knight

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.

Bunch of rich kids lose their dad…and they know magic kinda?

This one just wasn’t for me. The writing was very good and very humorous at times, but I couldn’t stand the characters. They’re all so vapid and not a lot of redeeming qualities. I get it: they’re a bunch of rich kids who lose their mom and their dad didn’t hug them enough. They KIND OF have a redemption arc, but not really. And I’m really not into the polyamory thing with Arthur. So yeah. Just not for me. Gave it the rating I did just because it was written well.

Definitely something very different

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot: 📖📖📖
Side Characters: 👯‍♂️👯‍♂️👯‍♂️
Pacing: 🏎️🏎️🏎️
Ending: 🎬🎬🎬
MC’s: 👩🏽‍🤝‍👨🏼👫
Main Characters:
Meredith- eldest sibling.
Arthur- only boy. Middle sibling
Eilidh- youngest sibling
This book is made up of about 75% internal dialogue. The POV is third but also 1st….I think. There are multiple main characters and I don’t think any of them are the MAIN main character. None of them are particularly likable. I felt, at points, that it might be better if they all died. The most interesting parts of this book are the romance aspects but they are frustratingly unromantic. Somehow this book wasn’t terrible though. The ending wasn’t necessarily good but it was engaging.

The human condition summed up wonderfully!

I laughed and cried and talked back to the book. I very much enjoyed how Olivia put into words what being a young mother is like, the difficult emotions that are felt seeing other people your age be successful, and the reality that even our parents are human. Giving yourself, the people you love and even strangers grace and space is a hard thing to do but very important for a happy life.

Narrator Brings The Story to Life

This is a character study that asks the following questions - How many different ways can a parent demanding perfection mess up a kid? What does it mean to be happy?

I started this book physically but had trouble following what was happening due to the large vocabulary and long sentences to start the book. This is for a reason because these are geniuses spirilling in their messy lives but it just made the story hard to follow initially. I still really wanted to know what happened and the audio helped a lot! The narrator does a great job with the inflection during these conversations and you can really hear the bitterness and anger these characters harbor.

Once i was in the flow of the story, I jumped between physical and audio as I was going about my day and really enjoyed both formats.

Its a character study but I could not put it down!! These siblings are on the brink of losing their minds and I needed to know what was going to happen.

It is finally

It is finally over. I’ve never in all my years of reading stayed up late to finish a book simply to get it over with. I’m being a bit harsh. Basically, this book wasn’t for me. I imagine many readers will love this book. In a nutshell, I didn’t like this read because I never for a minute felt the characters would not turn out okay. Good for them. I also really did not like the narrator of the book (not the voice actor reading the book but the narrator in the book [you know what I mean]). Multiple times during the book I thought to myself: I really wish this person would stop talking. Unintentionally while I was listening to this book about a magical family I was also reading another book about a very different magical family: Mariana Enriquez’s our share of night. That book has kept me riveted. Reading late into the night for reason more appealing to me. Ultimately, I think it is down to what is more interesting to you. Look at both of these books you’ll know which one you’re more interested in.