2024 Book Review Series: Romance?

One of the hardest things to do as a reader is to tell your friends that you didn't like the book they recommended. It's an especially difficult conversation when that book is their all-time favourite. But, as the saying goes, one person's trash is another person's treasure. While I wouldn't consider my most recent read trash by any means, it didn't resonate with me the same way it does with the friend who encouraged me to pick it up.

Olivie Blake's Alone With You in the Ether is a self-proclaimed love story. It follows two unlikely lovers (as all the best romances do), Charlotte Regan and Aldo Damiani. This pair is misfitting on paper because Charlotte (who goes primarily by her last name and will be referred to as such going forward) is a flaky, art-loving ex-con with intimacy issues, whereas Aldo is a socially awkward and ironically pragmatic mathemetician. However, their common desire to find something of interest makes them the perfect pair when together.

While it wasn't a plot I would read again, there are a few things I really enjoyed about Blake's novel. Firstly, the way that the narrators spoke about characters who mattered to Regan and Aldo versus those whom they did not care for worked very well for their romance. While this was a romance novel, the way it was written is unorthodox for the genre. From the turn of the page from part three to part four, a relationship that was nothing became everything in full force. The structure strays so far from the romance genre that I struggle to categorize it as such. However, because so much of the typical slow build is missing, the way the narrators speak dismissively about supporting characters (including Regan's initial boyfriend, Marc) and passionately about the main pairing makes up for what is lost in the plot.

Secondly, Blake could teach a masterclass on prose. The other reason I struggle to call this piece a romance is because the language is so different from the romance novels controlling that market at the moment. The sentences are long and winding with elegant word choices that are both fitting and contradictory for the high-class yet gruff protagonists. It is much closer to literary fiction in this way. Blake also has a beautiful way of writing the thoughts of characters who are in conversations that they don't care to be in. I would be lying if I said I wouldn't be trying to emulate her writing in my work own.

Despite my high praise of Blake's language, I could not connect with the romance in this piece. The build-up strayed so far from the norm that the good parts of romance novels were also lost. Up until they were suddenly in a committed relationship, the connection between Regan and Aldo was regimented and unemotional. If it were not for the prologue and first part of the novel's explaining that the pair would be together, I would not have suspected their interest in each other at all.

Further, the first part of this novel included screenplay formatting including setting, scene, and narrator interjections that were not continued throughout the rest of the novel. I didn't mind the experimental structure but I struggled to see its value without bringing it through the entire piece. Nevertheless, I applaud Blake for taking risks in a trope-based genre.

I'll have to break the bad news to my friend, but Blake's writing impressed me enough that I'll be able to keep the conversation in good spirits. Plus, Blake has published in a variety of genres, so I'm excited to give her writing another chance. I'm hopeful that the prose I was so fond of will better complement a different story.