A review by ericageorge91
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

informative reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

So…my thoughts: 

Character study - This story was very character-focused with very little plot. I felt like we really got to know Regan and Aldo intimately. However, I wasn’t particularly in love with either of them. I mostly felt ambivalent towards Aldo and then I outright disliked Regan a few times in the book because she baffled me. 

I’m sure it was the point of the story, but she seemed to have no fucking idea what she wanted and it frustrated me to no end.
First, she wanted low stakes in a relationship, which she had with Marc. Then, she resented the lack of jealousy from him (you know…a factor of the low stakes relationship 🙄). Then, when Marc does get jealous, Regan gets defensive and is upset that he figured out that she wanted to fuck Aldo before she was ready for Marc to find that out?? Like…WHAT?!? And then, she laments how easy and predictable men were and Aldo did the unpredictable thing and she was mad about it?? Huh??
Regan is the dizziest bitch I have ever read, omg. But, in the end, I disliked the people around Regan (Marc and her mother) even more than I did her, so it bumped my feelings towards her back up to ambivalent.

Storytelling - There was unique storytelling and story structure. I appreciate that the story is divided into six parts like the hexagon theme. That was cute. The first part read like a play. It set the scene with fourth wall breaks with narration and scene descriptions. I did enjoy that aspect. The later parts had a lot of spoken dialogue without quotations and long meandering paragraphs that, I think were meant to depict Regan and Aldo’s racing thoughts? It was kind of confusing, but if that was the point, mission accomplished!

The Romance - I know this was meant to be a love story because I was told so. Do I actually believe in this love story? No. Did I did root for this love story? Also no. I know part of it has to do with me not clicking with the main characters, but part of it was the relationship itself.
By the end of the book, I wasn’t completely convinced that Aldo’s interest in Regan wasn’t an extension of him trying to solve an unsolvable problem to keep his interest and keep him away from drugs. Nor was I persuaded that Regan’s continued interest in Aldo wasn’t just her convincing herself that she wasn’t the impulsive person Marc believed her to be and that this thing with Aldo was built to last.

Light academia? - An ungodly amount of time was devoted to talk of math and bees. Both of which, I care not. This book had the pretentiousness of dark academia with Shakespearan levels of drama. For example, the way that Aldo repeatedly walked around with unsmoked joints, I felt like he had crawled out of the pages of The Fault in Our Stars to tell Regan, “It’s a metaphor” 😂 

Also, I was CRINGING at the moment when he finds her artwork and some couple said it was pretty and we got this lovely internal monologue: 

“It isn’t pretty, [Aldo] wanted to say, it’s lonely, it’s desolate, it’s a chilling portrait of vastness. How ignorant are you to look at this and diminish it to some kind of trinket, are you dead? It’s the human condition! It’s the entire universe itself! It’s the depths of space-time you utter fucking philistine and how dare you, how fucking dare you stand there and fail to weep?” 

And so on and so forth.

I don’t know, man. I’m sure it was supposed to be super deep, but I was just squirming on my couch with second-hand embarrassment 🥴

Bipolar Representation - From the acknowledgments, I can appreciate how personal this story was to the author who went through her own Regan-like journey. I heard that this book has one of the truest portrayals of bipolar disorder. I am not bipolar myself, so I cannot speak to that, but if you’re looking for a book with good mental health rep, this might be it! Just be sure to read the author’s disclaimer because the main character made choices about her treatment that might not be the right choice for others. 

Final Thoughts - If you love romance, maybe you can view this story as some modern day, Romeo and Juliet-like shit (without the insta-love), because Aldo and Regan seemed to love each other veryintensely. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t meant to know. And that’s perfectly okay. 

I think my opinion of the book definitely suffered due to the hype on BookTok. I was expecting to be emotionally ripped apart and gently put back together and for me, this story did not deliver. I think it was an okay book that if you’re bored, you should give it a try 🤷🏾‍♀️

TW: Drugs, addiction (mention), infidelity (emotional, some physical touching and kissing), overdose, toxic mother relationship
Rep: BIPOC characters, bipolar disorder
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