Alone With You in the Ether: A love story like no other and a Heat Magazine Book of the Week

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I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed. this is a character driven book and the plot is the characters lives so don’t go into it saying “omg it’s so pretentious” like that’s the point. Regan struggles to define herself for herself and even many of the bad-faith representations of her she rages against are mostly invented in her mind (Blake has a brilliant moment of narrative crafting when we discover the argument between Regan and her mother is all staged in her head though proceed to assume her fictionalized words are the truth of how she feels about Aldo and Regan). This is, ultimately, a literary romance, one with grit and uncomfortable explorations into themes of mental health, co-dependency, compulsive self-sabotage and the ways the veil of illusion begins to slip as relationships progress and we must decide to crack or embrace that ‘ it is perilously wonderful to suffer so sweetly with you.

i don’t know how it is to anyone else, if it’s aggressively unrelatable or boring or weirdly paced, so don’t listen to me. While this book isn't necessarily a romance for me, its been a long time since I felt so connected to the characters AND the connection between them. Many will disagree with me on this and that's ok but let me just say that what is painted as her vulnerability and uniqueness in this story just came across as manipulative and dependant for me. as unlikely as it sounds given the negatives i just listed, there are some true moments of beauty in this.

Because to me, it felt like unwrapping a beautifully wrapped present only to find an empty box underneath.

If this is what it is to burn, he thought, then I will be worth more as scattered ash than any of my unscathed pieces. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision. i was meandering through the reviews on this and found some of the popular ones describing how this was glamorizing deteriorating mental health, etc. While family is gathered, children playing, and everyone being merry, this book came to me like a gift, packaged with elements of raw, unadulterated beauty. This was my first Olivie Blake and I will certainly read others, it is a book without any fantastical elements though still is undeniably magical.but this one is different, it’s not for anyone else just because i don’t know how to describe this book for anyone else. i can understand that if it’s not relatable to you, not for you, it would be a very difficult book to like.

Yet there is a darkness lurking just beneath, something that might not be immediately evident in the blinding glare of meet-cutes and warm infatuation but still casts shadows they choose to find intriguing instead of alarming. Olivie lives in Los Angeles with her husband and new baby, where she is generally tolerated by her rescue pit bull.When Regan and Aldo's worlds collide, a chance encounter at the Art Institute, they bank on six conversations, a measure that elevates their relationship to an alternate world. Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake is a glimpse into the nature of love, and how to face the fractures of yourself. There was something about 'Alone With You in the Ether' that drew me in, tangled me in its abyss, trapped in the world of these two complex characters. There’s even a point in the novel where they have a fight and Regan has thoughts of stabbing Aldo, her family, and herself, all because she cannot have a man that she is literally addicted to because she puts all her value as a human being into one other person. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.