someone said this book felt like seeing god and they’re completely right. it felt like i was in heaven and hell at the same time too. I spent the first 60% or so MARVELING at the FANTASTIC writing. I don’t want to make light of that. I was moved. The building tension was so good. We were careening towards disaster and I knew it would hurt and I couldn’t wait. I kept imagining that my review would just be one word— Ow.— next to a 5 star rating. I didn’t have a doubt in my mind.

Alone With You in the Ether - Booktopia Alone With You in the Ether - Booktopia

Olivie Blake—a pen name of chosen through a name generator—began her career writing fan fiction and self-publishing novels until going viral on social media landed her a book deal with Tor and the recognition she certainly deserves. Best known for her dark academia fantasy series, The Atlas Six, here Blake writes in ways that feel magical without having to be magic beyond the sparks of love but still retains a very academic atmosphere to her characters and settings. Blake brings Chicago alive here, taking us through the streets, the classrooms of the University of Chicago where Aldo teaches and into the absolutely amazing Art Institute where Regan works as docent. I love that museum intensely and the pair having an affection for the Armory there as the place of their first meeting steals my heart. Alone With You In The Ether has captivated me in a way that no romance novel has before. It is beautiful, literary, philosophical, magical without being fantastical, romantic, and intimate. It feels like baring a part of your soul to another, it conveys the intimacy that comes with a conversation with someone who doesn’t simply listen to what you’re saying because listening is the easy part. It conveys the feeling of the intimacy that comes with someone who engages with what you’re saying no matter how little they understand what you’re talking about simply because they find it- you interesting. It conveys the feeling of letting someone into your space, and allow them to get to know you- not the façade you might put up, but the real and the messy, even if it’s done inadvertently because they see you, see through you. Aldo’s right thumb beat against his thigh, percussive to the rhythm of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,”

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I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed.” This is a love story, but not a love story, because it's complex, it shatters, it sometimes has jagged edges, which gives everything life. Which gives life to love. Delivery with Standard Australia Post usually happens within 2-10 business days from time of dispatch. Please be aware that the delivery time frame may vary according to the area of delivery and due to various reasons, the delivery may take longer than the original estimated timeframe. which then infected the rest of his fingers. They drummed against the threading of his jeans, impatient, while his left hand continued the motion of faux-smoking.

Alone With You in the Ether Paperback – 20 June 2020 Alone With You in the Ether Paperback – 20 June 2020

Their personalities had two or three distinct traits and little to nothing else to cling onto, as a reader, as we meander throughout their relationship that seems all consuming to them, but, as an outsider, deeply confused me because they speak for hours on hand but manage to say nothing in the process. Their connection is superficial and deeply obsessive (they both don’t have a single friend and barely reach out to their family because they are all consumed by each other), and it concerns me that their ending connection feels like a triumph when they are not in a good place to be in a relationship.but on the other hand, i cant stop thinking about this? as unlikely as it sounds given the negatives i just listed, there are some true moments of beauty in this. most of them coming from aldo and how his brain works. the way he views the world and describes how things fit mathematically is really quite something. i could listen to him talk about bees all day long. This was also my first ever buddy read and holy shit why haven't I done this before lmaoo it's wayy more fun when you've got someone to vent about it lol. I understand this is the point of it all, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy the ride, nor does it negate how often I see people praising this as one of the most romantic books they’ve read. struggling with mental health issues myself i really related to some of the aspects that regan dealt with in this book, it really felt like i was understood. i really liked the sciencey part of the book too, made me feel super smart even though i know nothing about quantum physics or the concept of time travelling.

Alone with You in the Ether - Macmillan Alone with You in the Ether - Macmillan

Alone With You in the Ether plays with narrative structure and linear time to weave a story of two broken people crashing together like comets, and we, as audience, are witness to their glorious destruction." — Tor.com

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i enjoyed reading the slower parts of the book because it really emphasised how one partner in the relationship was fast paced and the other was wanting to move slower and needed more structure but was feeling like he was spiralling, the foreshadowing was cool! From Olivie Blake, 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. To all the other reviewers of this book....did we...did we read the same thing? I've missed something major here. The prose is pretty but tangential, half the time it feels like it leaves off in the middle of a thought and while I'm mentally trying to fill in the blanks, I've lost all feeling for the story and characters. Its outer shell was pretty but otherwise it was empty on the inside. For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?

Alone with You in the Ether - Macmillan

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. Blake aims for grand phrasing of emotions that land quite impactfully and, sure, it may be overwrought at times but that's exactly how obsessive love feels. I love the way it spirals through the stratosphere or seems to be tumbling out of control or even trails off mid-thought because it so lucidly captures untethered emotions (and intrusive thoughts, which are constantly present in this book). There is a musicality to it, but it is like every instrument in a band trying to all take a solo at once in the cacophony of feeling so much you aren’t sure if you can contain it. It is art, pure and simple. Hexagons. Quantum groups. Symmetry. Nature loved balance, especially symmetry, but rarely managed it. How often did nature create perfection? Almost never. Math was different. Math had rules, finite and concrete, but then it just kept going. The problem and the thrill of abstract algebra was that Aldo had been studying it in depth for over seven years, and he could study it for seven million more and still understand almost nothing. He could spend infinite lifetimes studying the mathematical basis of the universe and the universe would still not make sense. In two weeks it might snow, might rain sideways, and then this park would not be available to him. He could get arrested for not-smoking or die at any moment, and then he’d have to do his thinking in jail or not at all, and the universe would remain unsolved. His work would never be done, and that alone was tragic, exhilarating, perfect. i loved this book so much, the way olivie blake writes characters who are in love is so beautiful and addictive. The day before was nothing special. It was special only because of how unspecial it was, or perhaps by how unspecial it would very soon become. Things were always stranger in retrospect, which was a funny little consequence of time. Yes, something like that.” There was never an easy way to explain what he was working on. It was nice of his father to ask, but they both knew that anything Aldo had to say was mostly lost on him. “Everything okay, Dad?”

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I will not understand how this book is classified as a romance when it felt like a horror story in my eyes. Following two vulnerable and flawed characters who come together to form a deeply unhealthy, sex-addicted, codependent relationship, this book left me baffled that people can romanticize and idealize the relationship between Aldo and Regan when I was actively rooting for them to separate and seek help. Alone With You In The Ether is one of the best romances I’ve read in a long time and I will continue to think about it for a long time. It’s a truly underrated book that I want to recommend to everyone I know. It’s a book that made me think deeply about love, life, time, and art. It’s a literary romance in the best sense of the word and because it is a romance novel, there is a happy ending, or as happy as it could be given the personalities of the characters. But it is a happy ending.