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A review by diamantin4
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
2.0
The only reason I didn’t give it 1 star is because it wasn’t poorly written.
Personally, I read this as part of a reading club and that’s why I finished it, but if it had been up to me I wouldn’t have. The set up was interesting, two strangers meet and agree to have 6 conversations as a sort of social experiment; however, their intentions and motivations felt improvised rather than intended. Btw we never get the results of the experiment :/
The first half of the book was the set up and it was pretty slow. The conversations between the characters were just so pretentious in a cringe way. Aldo is supposed to be a genius, but often his conversations lacked intellect and there is no explanation. It is mostly tell and no show. We are told over and over that he is genius and awkward, and Regan is impulsive and wild. Like, we get it after the third time! Moreover, there wasn’t a motivation behind their actions, it was just happening and the characters went along with stuff for no reason.
There were no side characters, they didn’t get personalities or depth. Everyone was “bad” and that was their only character trait.
The talk on mental health… was rather confusing since it seems to say that therapy and medicine doesn’t work, that they take away your ✨sparkle✨ The author herself mentions that she has a mood disorder, goes to therapy and is medicated, but wanted to show how a person can go on their life w/o them… now while they might not work for everyone, still in the story there wasn’t a point where Regan was ok w/o therapy and medication… so?
Her reasoning was that she couldn’t paint while she was medicated, but she still didn’t paint while she wasn’t medicated. It pushes the idea of the tortured artist, which is a lie, artists produce more work when they are in the right mental space. In fact not having a good mental health affects the quality and quantity of art produced so again WHAT WAS THE REASON?
For the first halve of the book Regan and Aldo had a good chemistry, they’re the only ones capable of tolerating their overly pretentious conversations. It’s like that girl at a campfire who pulls out a ukelele or the film dude who plays Pink Floyd at the party. At the smoke sesh they’re like “we live in a floating rock” and think that’s nuanced or deep or something. But that was okay. Regan was REALLY funny. And then the second half was like I was reading completely different characters.
Regan was no longer funny, she was annoying, avoidant, invasive. Aldo was extremely passive and dispassionate. They had sex over and over to fix fights or avoid conversations. And it was like “as we were fucking we saw the stars and became the entire universe” like damn, no dick is that good. Anyways, it just felt like the buildup from the beginning was worthless. There was like ZERO reasoning to why they dated, or why they did the things they did. It was very superficial on both the characters and the plot and yet so long.
I wouldn’t recommend it, not as a romance, not as a novel, not as a conversation on mental health, not as a character growth story.
Personally, I read this as part of a reading club and that’s why I finished it, but if it had been up to me I wouldn’t have. The set up was interesting, two strangers meet and agree to have 6 conversations as a sort of social experiment; however, their intentions and motivations felt improvised rather than intended. Btw we never get the results of the experiment :/
The first half of the book was the set up and it was pretty slow. The conversations between the characters were just so pretentious in a cringe way. Aldo is supposed to be a genius, but often his conversations lacked intellect and there is no explanation. It is mostly tell and no show. We are told over and over that he is genius and awkward, and Regan is impulsive and wild. Like, we get it after the third time! Moreover, there wasn’t a motivation behind their actions, it was just happening and the characters went along with stuff for no reason.
There were no side characters, they didn’t get personalities or depth. Everyone was “bad” and that was their only character trait.
The talk on mental health… was rather confusing since it seems to say that therapy and medicine doesn’t work, that they take away your ✨sparkle✨ The author herself mentions that she has a mood disorder, goes to therapy and is medicated, but wanted to show how a person can go on their life w/o them… now while they might not work for everyone, still in the story there wasn’t a point where Regan was ok w/o therapy and medication… so?
Her reasoning was that she couldn’t paint while she was medicated, but she still didn’t paint while she wasn’t medicated. It pushes the idea of the tortured artist, which is a lie, artists produce more work when they are in the right mental space. In fact not having a good mental health affects the quality and quantity of art produced so again WHAT WAS THE REASON?
For the first halve of the book Regan and Aldo had a good chemistry, they’re the only ones capable of tolerating their overly pretentious conversations. It’s like that girl at a campfire who pulls out a ukelele or the film dude who plays Pink Floyd at the party. At the smoke sesh they’re like “we live in a floating rock” and think that’s nuanced or deep or something. But that was okay. Regan was REALLY funny. And then the second half was like I was reading completely different characters.
Regan was no longer funny, she was annoying, avoidant, invasive. Aldo was extremely passive and dispassionate. They had sex over and over to fix fights or avoid conversations. And it was like “as we were fucking we saw the stars and became the entire universe” like damn, no dick is that good. Anyways, it just felt like the buildup from the beginning was worthless. There was like ZERO reasoning to why they dated, or why they did the things they did. It was very superficial on both the characters and the plot and yet so long.
I wouldn’t recommend it, not as a romance, not as a novel, not as a conversation on mental health, not as a character growth story.