

Alone With You in the Ether
Books | Fiction / Literary
4.1
(723)
Olivie Blake
CHICAGO, SOMETIME-Two people meet in the armory of the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. After their meeting, those things do not change. Everything else, however, is slightly different. Both obsessive, eccentric personalities, Aldo Damiani and Charlotte Regan struggle to be without each other from the moment they meet. The truth-that he is a clinically depressed, anti-social theoretician and she is a manipulative liar with a history of self-sabotage-means the deeper they fall in love, the more troubling their reliance on each other becomes. An intimate study of time and space, ALONE WITH YOU IN THE ETHER is a fantasy writer's magicless glimpse into the nature of love, what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.
AD
More Details:
Author
Olivie Blake
Pages
302
Publisher
Independently Published
Published Date
2020-06-20
ISBN
9798655480407
Community ReviewsSee all
"2.5⭐️ started with the audiobook but it was so difficult to follow with so many narrators so I got the hard copy which was easier to process. The plot as a whole was good & different but the writing style was so odd that it was hard to get into. I don’t see myself reading anything else from this author."
"Like many other reviewers, I agree the first chunk of Alone With You in the Ether far surpassed the second chunk. The lyrical writing was enchanting and had me memorized. There were several topics (bees, the theoretical side of math, and the definition of art/artists) that Blake explored in deeply thoughtful/philosophical ways. I felt enveloped in the story and loved how Regan and Aldo met. It was quirky and seemed very unique. <br/><br/>However, I also agree with the reviewers who expressed concern over how this story developed and question what the end message is supposed to be. In the author’s note Blake shares her own experience with mental illness and how she eventually got off meds herself. With Regan, this choice seemed scary. I know she felt muted on her meds, but she also wasn’t being honest in therapy or with her psychiatrist and maybe a different combination would have worked better for her. I also think it’s very scary to think Regan viewed these measures that might have been helpful as obstacles to truly loving Aldo. <br/><br/>Overall I have mixed thoughts and can’t decide if I think this story is harmful because of how therapists and medication are portrayed or if the beginning outweighs the end and this story is an example of very beautiful prose.<br/><br/>Thank you to Edelweiss for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review."
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Alyssa Czernek
"⭐️⭐️⭐️"
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Annalee Kelly