Review - Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

 

 

 

Title: Alone with You in the Ether

Author: Olivie Blake

Pages: 272

Publisher: Tor Books

Release Date: 1st June 2022

 

Blurb from Goodreads:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone With You In The Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.


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.

 

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My Review:

 

 *I received an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Tor and NetGalley*

Charlotte Regan is a volunteer tour guide at an art museum who has been in trouble for making counterfeits.

Aldo Damiani is studying for a PhD in maths and is obsessed with bees and time travel.

When the two meet, they are instantly drawn to each other.

Aldo and Regan both have their own struggles, but can they make things work between them?

I wasn't a big fan of the previous book that I read by the author, but I decided to give them another go and requested a copy of this book on NetGalley.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. It felt rather messy at times, but it was also very honest about mental health struggles.

I didn't feel that I particularly connected to either Aldo or Regan, but out of the two of them I preferred Aldo. I did find Regan to be an interesting character at times, and I did feel for her, but I didn't find her very likeable.

The plot was mixed for me. I definitely preferred the first half as it felt like not much happened during the second half and I lost interest a little.

I struggled with the writing style at times, especially at the beginning, and I wasn't sure I would even end up making it to the end.

I am disappointed that I didn't enjoy this more, but I have to admit that I did go into this book thinking that I probably wouldn't love it.

Overall, this was a mixed read.