From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake is 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.
The children of Thayer Wren have been remarkable since the day they were born. Unsurprisingly, since Thayer was the brilliant CEO of Wrenfare Magitech and so-called father of modern technology. Telepathically and telekinetically gifted, his offspring - Meredith, Arthur and Eilidh Wren - are publicly admired and privately capable of extraordinary feats. Any of the Wren prodigies would be a plausible inheritor to the Wrenfare throne. Or at least, so they like to think.
On the day of Thayer Wren's unexpected demise, the lives of the three Wren siblings are in various states of chaos and disrepair. Meredith, now CEO of her own profitable company, is knee-deep in a dystopian capitalist nightmare, haunted by the ghost of a childhood friend. She's also facing imminent exposure for corporate malfeasance by a journalist ex-boyfriend. Congressman Arthur Wren is wrestling with his disgruntled constituency and a strange, magical malady that can only be called the yips. Eilidh, former prima ballerina whose spinal injury ended her career, now finds herself triggering accidental, uncontrolled apocalypse events.
In the wake of Thayer's loss, the Wrens return to their childhood home. Here they will face their contentious relationships with their father, and each other. On the journey of gifted kid to clinical depression, nobody wins - but which Wren will rise to the top? Can one of them seize the prize of their father's crown?
This is a compulsive contemporary fantasy of family, twisted love and dangerous secrets from a writer at the height of her powers.
