Regan doesn't adhere to normal rules, always thinking of a better or worse outcome,bored with monotony. I would have enjoyed it if Blake continued this style more through the book as I missed it, but once the characters are established it instead turns more inward as they attempt to have more of a harness on their own narratives. While family is gathered, children playing, and everyone being merry, this book came to me like a gift, packaged with elements of raw, unadulterated beauty. I started this book the moment it landed at my door expecting to laugh and cry and love two flawed humans who were lucky enough to find and understand each other. Alone With You in the Ether finds Regan and Aldo caught in each other’s gravitational attraction of love, a love that scorches through them and their physical selves to expose their very essences as forces navigating either by emotion or logic.

This is what I get when I go into a book expecting it to become a new favorite based on the synopsis and glowing reviews. I wasn't able to connect at all for the better part of the first two chapters and then they went to the church and to say I ascended during that scene would be an understatement. Told through prose that has passages so ethereally gorgeous it could only exist in service of love and with a dual narrative that threads their lives together, Alone With You in the Ether is a gorgeously interior and intimate portrait of difficult love that we can’t help but dive into even if it is destined to burn us down to ash as Blake’s storytelling beautifully cuts right into the troubled heart of matters as deeply as she cut into the heart of the reader. They'll need to face their fears and the fractures within themselves - and still love as if they've not broken. The fact that I even finished this book is an accomplishment for me because I came thisclose to dnfing it more than once.and even though i have some issues with the narrative structure and style, i did find some parts of it to be inspiring. The beginning might confuse you and might leave you scratching your head but godddd, this story was so beautiful. This is, ultimately, a literary romance, one with grit and uncomfortable explorations into themes of mental health, co-dependency, compulsive self-sabotage and the ways the veil of illusion begins to slip as relationships progress and we must decide to crack or embrace that ‘ it is perilously wonderful to suffer so sweetly with you.

the narrative definitely gives off the vibe that its trying too hard, not to mention how inconsistent it is in a few different ways.and olivie blake just is just such a talented author and the sentences she is able to string together, about really dark and hard to talk about things, really resonated with me in a way other words just never have before. i found myself looking forward to hearing their thoughts on different theories and ideas and learning something new. She says so at some point - that if she was on medication still, she couldn't/wouldn't have loved Aldo. Aldo on the other hand, looks straight into the present, or the future, almost always lost in quantum matters.

Interactions that seem so small and minute between them felt so intimate and so tender that my heart ached in the best way. There are some truly troubling messages about ignoring the signs of deteriorating mental health in this story and one harrowing scene in which Regan (having just semi-broken up with Aldo) has graphic thoughts of stabbing him and her family until she runs with blood. This normally would not bother me, but between Regan and Aldo, there was sex, obsession, co-dependence and very little else.

The prose is quite engaging and this is a much faster paced novel than I tend to read so I was gripped the whole way through.