Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Alone with You in the Ether

First book I have read by Olivie Blake. Enjoyed but wasn't enthralled; I found in places it was slightly slow making it a bit difficult to get through. However, I do think it was a great depiction on mental health and the characters felt like they were real. I really liked reading about the supportive and loving relationship between the male MC and his father.

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writingcaia's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

This book hooked me from the start with the amazingly beautiful writing and narrative, that so mirrored each character in each of their POVs, and thus I fell into the hole that was the psychological conundrums, obsessiveness and traumas of the two main characters Aldo Damiani and Charlotte Regan since their meeting at the Art Museum where Regan volunteers and where Aldo goes to enjoy the white noise of people while he obsesses with his studies of time travelling.
I felt like I was being held by the hand through the maze that was their meetings, their lives with their mental issues and prior problems, and the love that bloomed and burned.
It made me cry, laugh, and hurt for them.
Regan bipolar in a loop of unhealthy love relationships and familial trauma, living in avoidance of a true life and true dream, always in spite of all, and Aldo anti-social and depressive, living a disconnected life with only his father as an anchor to it.
How can love survive the mental problems of these two, the prior relationships and abandonments? My heart ached for them throughout and I truly could not see a happy ending, although I wanted it so much for them, Aldo wanted it, but did Regan, or was Aldo just another escape from her issues, another spoke on the wheel of her avoidance like the boyfriend she had when she met him?
Loved it so much I read it all in one day unable to stop until it finished at 5am.
After this one I’m craving to read all of Olivie Blake’s books, especially the standalone ones.
A truly candid love story that I wished had not ended.

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yilliun's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

I have spent much of my early adult life living in Chicago, so this book felt doubly real to me. I cried, I laughed (pride and prejudice reference anyone?), and most importantly I fell in love with these beautifully complex characters.

Regan with her anxious attachment and self destructive tendencies felt like I was reading about myself at times. She struggles to connect with the world around her and her struggles felt so honest to me as a reader. I am so glad I picked up this book. One of my top reads this year.

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