Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake

Book Review

Matthew Johns

The Wren family are your typical dysfunctional wealthy dynasty: a distant, but brilliant father (Thayer Wren); an ambitious and equally brilliant older sister (Meredith Wren); the unambitious politician middle child (Arthur Wren); and the younger sister, an ex-ballet dancer injured in a car accident, who doesn’t really feel like part of the family, but is doted on by her father (Eilidh Wren).

Thayer Wren dies at the start of the book with an unclear will, leaving the Wren siblings all wondering who will inherit Wrenfare Magitech, the company with which their father made his fortune. They live in a world where magic is fairly common, and all have a degree of magical aptitude, which is combined with technology (aka technomancy) within both Thayer Wren’s company Wrenfare, and Meredith Wren’s own company.

All of the children have their issues – Meredith’s company was built around a product that she built, which claims to make its users happy. The only issue is that it doesn’t work, and her journalist ex-boyfriend is planning on exposing this. Arthur is the second youngest congressman in history, but is likely to lose the upcoming re-election. He is emotionally distant from his wife, Gillian, and in a throuple with an aristocrat and a racing car driver. Eilidh (a Scottish name, pronounced “Ay-lee”) was one of the most famous ballet dancers in the world until a car accident brought her career to a finish. She now works for Wrenfare, but finds herself lacking meaning in her life now that she’s unable to dance.

Olivie Blake is a well-known and well-respected Sunday Times bestselling author, so I was looking forward to this book. While it’s very well-written, and she has an excellent vocabulary, I found the first couple of hundred pages very long and quite hard going. It felt like nothing was really happening, but obviously she was setting the scene, building up the characters, giving them backstory, and showing the dynamic between the Wren siblings. I kept putting the book down and coming back to it weeks later, but when I got deeper into the novel – around the time they all moved into their departed father’s house while waiting for the will to be revealed, it felt like it really took off. The relationships between the characters and the characters themselves really came to life. At that point, I didn’t want to put the book down and found it to be a real page-turner. Seeing the characters all starting to figure out their own issues, and coming together as a family made the book come to life – in my view, at least. 

Blake has a great way of bringing characters to life, and if you’re already a fan of her work, then this should be on your to-read pile already. If not, it’s still worth checking out – with subtle and not-so-subtle humour in places, alongside the witty repartee between the characters, it’s a good (if long) read.