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

challenging dark reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This was my first foray into Olivie Blake's books and... I really enjoyed it???

Does 'Alone With You in the Ether' have its issues? Yes, absolutely. The characters are deeply, deeply fucked up, to the point where I would encourage anyone wanting to give this a try to look up a TW list before doing so, the plot is rather meandering, and the writing can be pretentious for pretentiousness' sake at times. But I ate it all up anyway???

This is exactly the kind of pretentiousness that I actually like and want, and I don't know how she did it, but reading both Aldo and Reagan felt like finding little pieces of myself all throughout them both. I do wish that their codependency was more directly addressed and resolved on the page, and I wish that we could see them getting the help that they need and start to understand how to navigate their relationship more healthily, though, which is the main gripe that I had with the book.

All of this to say that this book is 100% an experience, and I feel fairly certain that I'm going to love everything that Olivie writes (excited to read her other books!!)