the moment i read the last paragraph of this book, i thought ah, i would never find a book like this. There’s even a point in the novel where they have a fight and Regan has thoughts of stabbing Aldo, her family, and herself, all because she cannot have a man that she is literally addicted to because she puts all her value as a human being into one other person. It is certainly a literary work, and all the heady topics of time theory and reflections and analysis of art are handled in accessible yet ponderous ways that are folded productively into the larger themes of the book.

i was meandering through the reviews on this and found some of the popular ones describing how this was glamorizing deteriorating mental health, etc. 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. this is kinda a side note but this book takes place in chicago and that alone can be a five star read for me, but my point is that olivie blake describes chicago so accurately that only a person who has lived here could ever do.

Interactions that seem so small and minute between them felt so intimate and so tender that my heart ached in the best way. The author went overboard trying to make the story and the characters seem deep and complex, and it turned out unbearably pretentious, tedious, overwritten, and straight-out boring instead. People who are difficult to love still deserve to be loved, and that is captured so elegantly in Alone With You in the Ether. Alexene tripped and fell into writing after abandoning her long-premeditated track for Optimum Life Achievement while attending law school. the writing style felt pretentious to me at first; how dialogues switch from being in first person i to being in third person she or him.

Art is loss,’ she muses, ‘ it’s the fleeting breath of a foregone moment, the intimacy of things undone, the summer season that passes.She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.