Books in Review: Alone With You in the Ether - Olivie Blake

Alone With You in the Ether: A lyrical and beautifully crafted love story.

Happy belated Valentines day, book friends. While I have recently discovered that I'm not really a big romance girlie anymore, there are a few romances that stick out in my mind — especially during this time of the year. One of those romances is Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake.

Olivie Blake is a name I only really knew for their quick rise to popularity after the release of The Atlas Six back in 2020. I had bought that book back when it was released, but never really had a strong desire to read it— mostly, I just really liked the matte black cover. I have a vague memory of hearing about Alone With You in the Ether a while after The Atlas Six, but it was more of a general awareness that a lot people active in online book communities tend to have. 

So when I was scrolling through Libby trying to find a short-ish audiobook to listen to whilst I was running errands — and making the always necessary stop at the library — and I noticed that Alone With You in the Ether (Henceforth known as AWYITE) was available and less than 10 hours long, I decided to give it a try. 

AWYITE is something that I would've loved no matter when I read it, but I think that the mentality around books I had at the time is what really pushed me to feel so passionately about it. 

If you hadn't noticed yet, I really, really loved AWYITE. It's easily in my top 5 (if not top 3) reads of 2023 so far. Immediately after finishing it, I ordered basically every book of Blake's that I could get my hands on.

Plot: 

When I read this, I had been stuck in a rut where everything I was reading felt all the same — the plots were predictable and the characters all felt shallow and boring. Needless to say, I deeply needed a change from what I'd been reading. 

Somewhat contrary to how tired I was with the so-called "plot twists" in my other books, there isn't really a plot in AWYITE, so there aren't any plot twists. I've recommended it to several people already and when each of them have asked me what it's about, the only thing I could answer with is "well, it's two people falling in love... Yeah that's really it." 

AWYITE is one of those no-plot-just-vibes kind of books. Nothing really happens; there is no big bad enemy to defeat or an evil villain to wait for their downfall. Our two main characters, Regan and Aldo, have a chance meeting, and decide to get to know each other through six conversations. Somewhere along the way, they fall in love. I think that using that simple set up for the novel really strengthens it; when you're working with such a premise, there isn't a lot you can't do within it. 

A lot of the time, I get bored with these big complex storylines — I vastly prefer a simple one that then makes itself compelling. AWYITE is definitely one of those stories. I loved seeing these two people fall in love, and learn how to be in love with each other, and how they cope with their differences. It's so much more compelling than other romances I've read that try and add more to the plot than just what a romance is at heart.

Characters: 
I am a firm believer that flawed characters are more fun. We all love a morally grey antihero, right? I don't necessarily view the characters as flawed per-se, but they are imperfect. Regan is diagnosed as bipolar and she has a lot of behaviours because of that that I wouldn't love to be in a relationship with; she's pretty impulsive and deemed "too fast" for Aldo.

Alternatively, I read Aldo as autistic; whether that was Blake's intention or my own experiences influencing the book, he did have many autistic traits. Admittedly, we do look for parts of ourselves in the books we read and as a diagnosed autistic person, I tend to see autistic traits in a lot of what I read. 

Having neurodiverse characters is not only amazing for the representation of the people in those communities, but it also makes your characters so much more interesting and complex, in my opinion. I've read two neurodiverse people fall in love before and it kind of just made me angry — largely from implications that if you're neurodiverse, the only people who will love you are also neurodiverse in them— but the mental illness in AWYITE is more used to create depth in the characters, not as their main reason for being together.

Writing: 

From the start of the book, I was struck with how elegant the writing was. In a formulaic genre like romance, most novels follow the exact same plot— boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, usually some dramatics in the third act, then boy and girl live together happily ever after. That is perfectly fine — we, as readers, pick up a romance novel expecting it to follow that plot. If, for some reason, halfway through a supposed romance novel, the couple got sent to space and began trying to colonize mars, we'd all have some questions. 

However, while we may need that plot to recognize the book we're reading as a romance novel, there is room for slight variations. Mostly, this difference comes from variations in the tropes, like small town or paranormal romances, or in the characters, like the grumpy-sunshines or morally-grey character types. 

AWYITE does have a similar change to the characters — it's mentally ill or non-neurotypical people trying to find love. However, Blake takes it even a little farther to make this book especially memorable. 

Part of this difference is in the plot, but the other part of this is in the writing. This is my first of Blake's work so I can't attest that she always writes this way but I hope she does. My favourite part of romance books are always those swoon-worthy declarations of love; the lines that so eloquently express the depth of the characters love for one another that you can't help but feel as you read. I mean, how can you not read this:

“Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me?”

-Alone With You in the Ether, Olivie Blake.

and this:

“She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: the Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.”

-Alone With You in the Ether, Olivie Blake.

and not fall in love with this book? I mean truly, I just barely don't cry while reading those quotes alone. Try and tell me that those lines don't absolutely slap. I will not believe you.

Blake's writing, especially in this, is just so poetic and heartfelt that the love between these two characters nearly becomes tangible in it's expression. It's just such beautiful writing that adds so much to such a beautiful story.

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Of course I've already said it, but I absolutely adored this book. I am a sucker for beautiful writing and poetic declarations of feeling. The characters were complex, but not in a way that felt like it was tokenizing their mental illnesses. Overall, it made me cry; it made me laugh; it made me swoon. It made me feel all the things and that's what made it so memorable for me.

Whenever I go to rate a book, the number one thing that I consider when I consider giving a book five stars, as opposed to four or even 4.5 stars, is what it made me feel. That's what I remember and that's how I know that the book has affected me; I have felt something, deeply, from mere ink on a page. That's what makes all my favourite books five stars and it's exactly what made Alone With You in the Ether five stars. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️