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’m not one usually for a romance novel, but this feels rather different than what one would expect. there is nothing inside my head but aldo and regan and bees and quantum formulas and differential equations and the crevices of their fragile minds and i am at lost for words to describe how utterly devastatingly beautiful this book was. this is kinda a side note but this book takes place in chicago and that alone can be a five star read for me, but my point is that olivie blake describes chicago so accurately that only a person who has lived here could ever do. For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet.

if art is supposed to make you feel something, then this book is art in its purest form, for there is no emotion this book hasn’t made me feel. Her choice to abandon her meds is troubling, though Blake explains in the afterword that it is not meant as ‘ perscriptive’ and is largely based on her own experiences and struggles with medication after a bi-polar diagnosis. 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. I love the way it spirals through the stratosphere or seems to be tumbling out of control or even trails off mid-thought because it so lucidly captures untethered emotions (and intrusive thoughts, which are constantly present in this book). as unlikely as it sounds given the negatives i just listed, there are some true moments of beauty in this.Olivie has penned several indie SFF projects, including the webtoon Clara and the Devil with illustrator Little Chmura and the viral Atlas series. 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. the moment i read the last paragraph of this book, i thought ah, i would never find a book like this.

I will not understand how this book is classified as a romance when it felt like a horror story in my eyes. But most notably, this sashaying of perspectives is like a needle threading the two together until, at the end, we witness them as a seamless whole viewed from the outside with a conversation entirely narrated of he said and she said instead of a duality of perspective. There is a musicality to it, but it is like every instrument in a band trying to all take a solo at once in the cacophony of feeling so much you aren’t sure if you can contain it. This was so beautiful, so heart-wrenching, and not to sound corny on main but I feel like a new person after reading this perfection.

It does touch close to the romanticization of mental health struggles being a gateway to good art, which is a troubling perspective, though that doesn’t seem the intent. My Mom lives here now, and I'm actually visiting her while I was reading this book--all elements that elevated the story. Alexene tripped and fell into writing after abandoning her long-premeditated track for Optimum Life Achievement while attending law school.

There exists a maxim that love transcends all, and Olivie Blake has finely crafted a fragile, fiery love affair that transcends even her characters to become a sensual romance between art and science. The prose is quite engaging and this is a much faster paced novel than I tend to read so I was gripped the whole way through. There are books that are written in such a beautiful way that it feels like no words can do my thoughts justice on this. I liked all of the same things you guys liked: Aldo, the poetic writing, the nuanced observations on the human condition, the romantic tragedy of it all. Art is loss,’ she muses, ‘ it’s the fleeting breath of a foregone moment, the intimacy of things undone, the summer season that passes.The author went overboard trying to make the story and the characters seem deep and complex, and it turned out unbearably pretentious, tedious, overwritten, and straight-out boring instead. What begins as romantic starts to look like a mental health spiral, and what comes easily at first is now fraught with fear and uncertainty, especially in Regan. This normally would not bother me, but between Regan and Aldo, there was sex, obsession, co-dependence and very little else. There are some truly troubling messages about ignoring the signs of deteriorating mental health in this story and one harrowing scene in which Regan (having just semi-broken up with Aldo) has graphic thoughts of stabbing him and her family until she runs with blood.

There would be times, particularly at first, when Regan would attempt to identify the moment things had set themselves on a path to inevitable collision. i like that sometimes people read and understand my opinion on something, or at least get a laugh out of it. Blake brings Chicago alive here, taking us through the streets, the classrooms of the University of Chicago where Aldo teaches and into the absolutely amazing Art Institute where Regan works as docent. they were both dealing with a lot when they met, and the realistic portrayal of mental health was very much appreciated.the book has six parts, and each part had it’s own voice and pacing that distinguished itself from the rest. Blake does well by having the story reject any quick fix or certainty, showing mental health is a lifelong journey and encouraging therapy and repeated self-assessment to remain both productive and healthy. i will cherish this book with every fiber of my being for the rest of my life and i want it engraved upon my heart. Regan did not enjoy honesty, she hated it, was repulsed by it and by her own truths especially,’ and the way the readers perceptions on Regan morph over the course of the book—and with new revelations on her life—emphasizes the way a person seems always in flux.