The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger is a hit or miss novel. This is a slightly longer fiction novel page wise that may not be a hit with those who have children. This novel peels back the curtains to expose the terrifying reality of the emotional turmoil that revolves around parenting.

It is a novel that tackles what a parent would do for their child to succeed or be seen as gifted over other children and how parental choices heavily impact a child's life. It's deep stuff if you think about it for too long but let's not delve into psychological analysis of parenting and instead assess the novel with a light hand.

If you are an individual who does not mind tackling the topic of parenting and privilege without diving too deeply into the complexity of said topic, then I would say go for this novel. It plays a fine line between hitting hard and making you want to sit down and cry about the world with characters that make the topic more light in reading than other non-fiction parenting books would do. If you want a novel with less narrative change and more intensity regarding parental drive and privilege, skip this and read something else.

A hit or miss novel, up to you to choose if it's worth your time.

The Gifted School starts with the construction of a new school. Crystal, Colorado is building a public magnet school for gifted children in the area. The four set of parents of Emma Z, Emma Q, Aidan and Charlie, and Xander and Tessa are decade old friends whose children have grown up together and are now vying for a spot in the new school.

They all want to see the children succeed but more importantly, they want their children to succeed the most. The prospect of admission into the gifted school is an opportunity to do as such and the novel follows that opportunity along with the first, second, and final cuts along with the fall-out and discoveries during that time period.

My favourite characters were actually the twin boys, Charlie and Aidan. I think they resembled the struggles twins go through that other single / children with siblings do not experience. Twins have unique struggles that to me were well described and this novel and Charlie and Aidan's personalities were written well and is why they were my favourite.

The parents though, there are so many, all just reminded me of parents? The plot does go between a parents point of view and then a child's point of view which I think helped expand the understanding of what each generation and character was experiencing. The only downside to the constant narrative switch is that it happened so frequently it was hard to keep the characters straight. Characters in all that are a hit and miss and they had pros and cons to their creation.

It is an okay ending. I think how it sits will depend on you and is why the novel is a hit or miss as like all novels, how it is perceived is based on the reader. Who could have guessed?

All I can say after reading The Gifted School is thank goodness I am not a parent. It is completely understandable to want what is best for your child, to assume you are raising the next prodigy, to believe your child is gifted and yet, not all children are the next prodigy but as a parent you still want to believe it. This novel really exposed how parental pressure is real and is why being a parent in my mind is terrifying because you don't want to push your child tooo far but you also don't want them to not thrive and then combined with your own personal burdens and life outside of your child and on and on makes raising a child difficult. Seriously, the biggest takeaway from me reading this is further confirmation parenting is difficult for all regardless of privilege and children are hard to understand.

I wish there had been more fall-out between the friends, it was all so easily brushed under the rug but, Samantha slept with Rose's husband. She had a baby with him and that means the Emma's are step-siblings not just best friends. I mean, I can kind of see how they were able to reconcile as long-term relationship and past mistakes are able to be grown from but seriously, I think a bit more fall out was necessary. If we had seen them grow without each other and then come back, I would have liked that more. I feel fall-out from all the parents we followed was necessary; the only 'sane' parent was Azra which makes sense as she had to balance out her ex-husband, Beck who definitely was not.

Can we talk about Beck for a second? How creepy, absolutely creepy, was it that he stayed in the hot tub with Tessa? For him to be that ignorant to believe it was okay because he truly did is crazy, Tessa is sixteen who he has now seen topless and accidentally flashed his bits too! This was also so quickly brushed over and I realised that the people Beck surrounded himself with are people who thought he was an idiot and I kind of have to agree. He had no malicious intentions but it was wrong and highly irresponsible and I think some repercussions would make sense to show to readers that that is not okay regardless of intention.

In all, I have more thoughts but I feel they would just be lengthly ramblings on how scary parenting is for both sides and how quickly lives can go awry when a child's future is involved. The Gifted School is a novel that made me feel things and one I found very realistic to modern-day life.