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claudcloud 's review for:

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
4.0
challenging dark reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was my first foray into Olivie Blake's books and... I really enjoyed it???

Does 'Alone With You in the Ether' have its issues? Yes, absolutely. The characters are deeply, deeply fucked up, to the point where I would encourage anyone wanting to give this a try to look up a TW list before doing so, the plot is rather meandering, and the writing can be pretentious for pretentiousness' sake at times. But I ate it all up anyway???

This is exactly the kind of pretentiousness that I actually like and want, and I don't know how she did it, but reading both Aldo and Reagan felt like finding little pieces of myself all throughout them both. I do wish that their codependency was more directly addressed and resolved on the page, and I wish that we could see them getting the help that they need and start to understand how to navigate their relationship more healthily, though, which is the main gripe that I had with the book.

All of this to say that this book is 100% an experience, and I feel fairly certain that I'm going to love everything that Olivie writes (excited to read her other books!!)