"That if someday, if you want to... you'll feel alive again." Meredith, you absolute asshole. I love you endlessly. This was an insanely confusing book for me. Olivie Blake, I fear will never have a cohesive opinion of your writing. Gifted & Talented is such a gorgeous story highlighting the myth of meritocracy whilst satirising Silicon Valley in such an intriguing and special way. The characters are deliciously complicated and fun. I spent the whole novel waiting to see how they woulod react to every little thing. Blake's writing has always been hit-or-miss. Her style is often rambling, filled digressions between parentheses and em-dashes, and I find that it works quite fabulously when I finally grasped who the narrator was. It, admittedly, took a while. And whilst the beginning had many phrases that had me genuinely wincing ("felt her heart cascade into her vagina" regarding fear was a... unique wording of events. As were a couple other lines.), I think that, to a certain extent, it makes sense when we learn that the character was describing the events to the author. Got to admire Meredith's honesty. Cruelty. Whatever. Regardless, this book, like her others, shows Blake's focus on characters. The events in this novel mostly span a week, and whilst a lot happens, we learn more about how each character reacts to what they see from an... omniscient author's perspective. It's confusing, and it's fun, and I really enjoyed the characters, no matter how horrible and irritating and unbelievable and downright real they are. Yes, I know it's a contradiction. We're talking about billionaires (?) here. I also want to highlight how insanely terrifying and cool to see urban fantasy/magical realism with a strong focus on STEM. It has just occurred to me that I haven't even discussed that it's a story about expectations, power, family, and the desperation to prove oneself. This book is genuinely so insane to me. I read it in one long sitting and I think if I did it any other way, I would have ben far more critical of the writing and the prose but I find that (unlike in Masters of Death) it made sense. Icky in the start-- I did consider DNFing it, but I'm very happy to have stayed through. Complex characters you will be my undoing.