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Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake

Fantasy

Gifted & Talented

by Olivie Blake

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Quick take

You can have all the money and magic in the world and still mess things up in this fantastical family drama.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, LGBTQ_themes

    LGBTQ+ themes

  • Illustrated icon, Salacious

    Salacious

Synopsis

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?

Content warning

This book contains mentions of eating disorders.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Gifted & Talented.

Gifted & Talented

1

Meredith Wren, a fucking asshole, not that it matters at this stage of the narrative but it’s worth pointing out, sat blinded by the overhead lights from the stage, squinting unflatteringly into the brand-new, state-of-the-art auditorium that had just been completed on Tyche’s unethically verdant campus. Too large a venue for an event of this nature, which would reasonably be attended by only the most ardent of nerds. Well, them, and anyone who stood to gain from her success financially. A forum for dorks and despots.

As her eyes adjusted to the masses bearing witness to her greatness, Meredith saw nothing but the pockets of empty seats. Jesus Christ, she thought, and wondered if the squinting was worsening her burgeoning crow’s feet. Blinking, she made a concerted effort to simply go blind. She became aware of something, a stye most likely, oh god, a stye, she hadn’t had one of those since her early college days, back when she’d still had the balls to fall into bed with makeup on, recklessly. She was meticulous now with her skincare ritual, how was it possible she could accumulate grime at this stage of her life? At this great age, how could she succumb to something so pedestrian as a stye? She blinked and wanted desperately to lie down, to eat a whole sleeve of pistachio macarons. To gorge herself from bed and never rise again. Just kidding. Ha ha.

From the crowd she became aware of notable faces. Ward, obviously. He was her business partner, like it or not. Cass, too, that was nice. Expected to some extent, as he was something-something operations at Tyche (she and Cass had had to disclose their personal relationship when Tyche’s partnership with Birdsong first went public, a relationship that was then only hazy at best—she’d been surprised Cass had managed to come up with a term that wasn’t “fucking sometimes”), but still, nice. Foster was smiling benevolently at her, the cunt. She’d taken the money, what did that make her? A traitor, fine, shut up. (She always heard unwelcome commentary in Lou’s voice.) Don’t bite the hand that feeds, Meredith thought for the eight millionth time. One of her father’s pet wisdoms—you can have money or you can have pride, and guess which one changes the world? Then there was a row of normal-looking people, suitably showered, probably journalists. Press badges, yep, journalists. Someone from Wired, a few from Magitek, someone who looked a lot like the boy she’d nearly cut and run for, but that was par for the course—she saw Jamie Ammar at least five times a week, usually in line at the grocery store. At Demeter, specifically. It was always some other absurdly handsome man in the ill-fitting jeans of the aughts.

God, but this one really looked like Jamie.

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Member ratings (28)

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Fantasy
View all
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Rebel Witch
Kingdom of Claw
Our Infinite Fates
Starling House
The Lost Story
The Courting of Bristol Keats
Water Moon
A Fate Inked in Blood
Five Broken Blades
Heartless Hunter
The Road of Bones
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
Where the Library Hides
The Kingdom of Sweets
Hera
A Sorceress Comes to Call
Hell Bent
Kaikeyi
Weyward
The Unmaking of June Farrow
The Fragile Threads of Power
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
The Book of Magic
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
A History of Wild Places
Gods of Jade and Shadow
The City We Became
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
Piranesi
Thistlefoot
Half Sick of Shadows
Ariadne
Ninth House
The Invisible Hour
Sourdough
Siren Queen
Fate of the Fallen
Immortal Longings
Practical Magic