Book Review: Gifted and Talented by Olivie Blake

Gifted & Talented by Olivie Blake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though this book was so weird and odd and also very messy, Gifted and Talented is a pretty good book that I feel like I need to break down this book by separating it by the siblings-Arthur, Meredith, and Eilidh.

Arthur-Arthur is the son of Thayer Wren, husband to Gillian, and lover to both Yves and Philippa, along with being a congressman. Arthur is losing his second race of being a congressman, he's in love with his wife while being with both Yves and Philippa, and he can short-circuit things with electricity. Arthur one day dreams up a little girl he named Riot, and it's all good and all, but there's a little problem.

And the little problem is that he keeps dying and coming back to life.

He doesn't know why he keeps doing that, and the more he keeps doing it, the more he has a fear that he's actually gonna die. When it got to the point that he had to contact Lou, an old friend of his sister's after he dies again and also learns of his father's death, he does spend time with her and tells her what's going on, and then he learns, close to the end, that he was eating one of Yves's candies and that's why he keeps dying over and over again. But at least he told his wife that he loved her, and also learned that something very bad happened to Philippa.

Meredith-Meredith is the owner and CEO of Birdsong, which has an app called Chip, an app that can swear that can make you happy. When she was about to give a talk about her app, she gets a text message from her ex-boyfriend, Jamie, that says I know what you did all Pretty Little Liars L style. Meredith tries not to talk about it, but when she meets up with Jamie again, it turns out that he was going to expose her through an article he wrote, which is about to be published soon.

Meredith tries everything she could to stop Jamie from publishing the article, even knowing that her business partner, Wren, jumped ship, and her boyfriend, Cass...well...she may or may not love him. Throughout Meredith's chapters, and though the pain of losing her father, Meredith wants to get back with Jamie, completely forgetting about her boyfriend, COMPLETELY. Like, girlie, why?? Why do you want to ruin the relationship you have with Cass to get back with your ex, who's trying to take you down? I don't get it. But at least, at the end, Meredith decided to go to jail and finally cleared the air with Lou after all these years and hating her so much.

Eilidh: I feel like Eilidh is a character that is...boring as crap. She used to be a dancer, but she's just living her life, kind of drifting through it. She has a crush on her father's assistant, not even knowing that she was sleeping with her father and is pregnant with his child. Eilidh can also bring the apocalypse, with a bunch of locuses attacking the plane, setting her house on fire, and on top of that, she's finding her voice with a lot of things. She's tired of Arthur and Meredith pretending that she's not in the room, calling each other Sister Death or Brother Annoying or something like that, and she gave a beautiful performance at her father's wake. Is Eilidh my favorite? Not that much, but she reminds me of myself in some ways.

I enjoyed this book. It was messy and had magic and was good. It made he have some ideas about a new story but that's just it.

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Book Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am shocked and pleased that I have enjoyed the Atlas Six. I had a fear that I wasn't going to like it, but to be honest, I truly enjoyed it. I didn't care for the plot, since it is a slow build. I cared about the characters more than I ever did the plot, and on top of that, I may have liked some of them, like Reina, Libby, Parisa, Nico and Tristan. The one I really didn't care for as much as I would've loved to, was Callum. I thought that he was going to die, and I was prepared for it, but then, sadly, it didn't happen, all because Libby was kidnapped by her ex and not killed by anyone else.

The whole thing about Parisa's past and Callum just casually bringing it up was something I really didn't like at all. I was mentally going "Bruh, for real? Now? For real?" And then him just...manipulating Tristan while Libby is trying to figure out what he can do and all that was fun, especially when they did what I THINK they did (LibbyTristanParisa with absinthe) and then the mystery of Nico and Gideon and how Nico was protecting Gideon from his mama (which is fair, seeing as that she gives me the bloody creeps).

I was kind of side-eyeing Atlas the whole time, because there was something about him I just didn't like at all. He made me sniff and look at him with a very deep side eye because he's supposed to be the "Caretaker" but in my opinion, he didn't do much caretaking to me. But then when it came to Ezra's point of view (and I straight up hate Ezra) and seeing what Mr. Atlas was planning...I immediately hated him and wished him to go to doody town as much as I wanted Nico to go until he grew on me, and where I want Callum to go because I really don't like Callum at all, to be honest.

I am going to read the second book because I really enjoyed this one so much.

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