Alone With You in the Ether

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Olivie Blake—a pen name of chosen through a name generator—began her career writing fan fiction and self-publishing novels until going viral on social media landed her a book deal with Tor and the recognition she certainly deserves. Best known for her dark academia fantasy series, The Atlas Six, here Blake writes in ways that feel magical without having to be magic beyond the sparks of love but still retains a very academic atmosphere to her characters and settings. 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. I love that museum intensely and the pair having an affection for the Armory there as the place of their first meeting steals my heart. I’m sorry I keep changing my rating, I just genuinely can’t decide what to rate this. I like it more than my other 2 star reads though) From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. 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. For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation? The last third of the book illustrated love in the form of sex. Therapy in the form of sex. Transcendence in the form of sex. Apology in the form of sex. This normally would not bother me, but between Regan and Aldo, there was sex, obsession, co-dependence and very little else. Do they really love each other? I honestly cannot tell.

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake (Paperback, 2020)

i know it says a love story on the front, but this book is very much about mental health + choosing to not be medicated for mental health conditions. it was a hard read for me, but a very impactful one. and olivie blake just is just such a talented author and the sentences she is able to string together, about really dark and hard to talk about things, really resonated with me in a way other words just never have before. To all the other reviewers of this book....did we...did we read the same thing? I've missed something major here. The prose is pretty but tangential, half the time it feels like it leaves off in the middle of a thought and while I'm mentally trying to fill in the blanks, I've lost all feeling for the story and characters. Its outer shell was pretty but otherwise it was empty on the inside. 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. Regan doesn't adhere to normal rules, always thinking of a better or worse outcome,bored with monotony. Aldo on the other hand, looks straight into the present, or the future, almost always lost in quantum matters. From the no. 1 international bestselling author of The Atlas Six. 'Olivie Blake is a mind-blowing talent' - Chloe Gong

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People who are difficult to love still deserve to be loved, and that is captured so elegantly in Alone With You in the Ether. I really loved this book and had goosebumps at multiple moments, it is very moving and searingly gorgeous at times. I’m not one usually for a romance novel, but this feels rather different than what one would expect. It is certainly a literary work, and all the heady topics of time theory and reflections and analysis of art are handled in accessible yet ponderous ways that are folded productively into the larger themes of the book. 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. The premise is rather cute with Aldo and Regan agreeing to have six conversations to see what they learn about each other, something right in Aldo’s wheelhouse as ‘ for Aldo, to love something was to study it; to devote every spare thought to understanding it.’ 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. Though Blake does capture the way in the falling-hard stage you tend to feel everything reminds you of that person, akin to learning a new word and seeing it everywhere: Regan’s art exhibit was so cliché that I couldn’t believe it. Really? We’re going in this direction? This is the big finale? How basic! This book was set up to be so much more than that— so much edgier than that— what happened?! How did we end up in Live, Laugh, Love territory? 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.”

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake | Waterstones

I don't think words can describe what this book means to me. 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.Their personalities had two or three distinct traits and little to nothing else to cling onto, as a reader, as we meander throughout their relationship that seems all consuming to them, but, as an outsider, deeply confused me because they speak for hours on hand but manage to say nothing in the process. Their connection is superficial and deeply obsessive (they both don’t have a single friend and barely reach out to their family because they are all consumed by each other), and it concerns me that their ending connection feels like a triumph when they are not in a good place to be in a relationship. the writing was unique yet absolutely beautiful. the book has six parts, and each part had it’s own voice and pacing that distinguished itself from the rest. 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.’ Mm.” Masso already knew that, but the asking was another ritual. “What are you thinking about today?”

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake (Paperback, 2020) Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake (Paperback, 2020)

So this is what it is to love something you cannot control, he thought. It felt precisely like terror.’ How is that in the same book as “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.” And then… it got worse. The writing became a little too self-indulgent. It took on that fake-deep/Jared Leto/tumblr circa 2014 tone. It started feeling pretentious. 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. I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handedAldo, who was called less frequently by his surname, Damiani, and even less commonly by his birth name, Rinaldo, had rolled a joint five minutes prior to his episode of silent meditation. He was twirling it between his fingers, staring into nothing. There was a right answer to this question and many, many wrong ones. This question, much like quantum groups, did not get any easier the more times Aldo was asked. The more times he ran the scenarios, in fact, the more the variables changed. How was he feeling? He had been bad before. He would be bad again. It would cycle and fluctuate the same way the weather would. It would rain in two weeks, he thought.