A review by whenjessreads
Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book made me feel deeply uncomfortable because I saw myself in it.

I’m not going to write a regular review for this book because it feels pretty impossible. I looked up a couple of reviews on goodreads to see how other people managed to put it into words, but that just frustrated me - some of the lower-rating reviewers were saying that the way the FMC thought or behaved seemed unreasonable or unrealistic, and all I could think was: but I’ve had those thoughts in my OWN brain. I’ve felt those emotions in my OWN gut and if you think they’re unrealistic then you should be thanking the lord you have never had the misfortune of experiencing what ‘real’ really is.

This is a book about love and how it will not fix you when you’re broken.
It’s a book about obsession and devotion and being too empty and too full and feeling that you’re not enough and believing that you’re too much.

The writing itself feels manic, like a spiral that starts in the first chapter and slowly tightens into a free fall at the centre. I know some people have said that they think it is pretentious, but I thought it was just beautiful. Maybe that’s because I have my own obsessions - and that the philosophical discussions and esoteric language intrigued me rather than bored me - but I do honestly think that if you have a healthy dash of curiosity, this book will pull you in rather than shut you out.

While I’m not usually a fan of books that are romance focused with no external plot, I didn’t feel like I was reading a romance. I felt like I was reading the debris left behind by a tornado. A tornado that had ripped through a stained glass factory, maybe. The magnetism of a disaster.

Everything about this book is fragile and pulsating and intimate and while some parts made me feel nauseated, it wasn’t due to the writing or the content, it was because it felt like Olivie Blake had somehow crawled into my head when I was sleeping and put words to my unspoken feelings.
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