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?

As Alexene Farol Follmuth

Twelfth Knight

A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.

©2025 Olivie Blake (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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

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.

There is no plot to this story.

This is the most boring book I have ever read/listened to. I can’t believe I got through it. Not sure how this is considered a fantasy. There was no world building, no plot, no magic. The “powers” that the siblings have were hardly used, not impressive at all. This was basically just about a will that the dead father left and the screwed up relationships of the siblings. And almost all of the characters in my opinion were the most unlikable people ever. What a waste of time this book was.

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.

Nothing Happens

I can’t believe this was over 500 pages and 24hr listen and so little happens. They just re-tread the same points and over and over and there’s no forward action. The most interesting plot points were covered on Succession. Every character is unlikable but none of them are interesting. No forward motion. There was a magic element but you never see the magic. I was reading with my sister so we kept listening because we were doing it together, but this book is a hard pass!