Disclaimer: I was given a free ARC of this book by St. Martin’s Press in exchange for a review.
The One That Got Away had me at hello. I am a sucker for a good second chance romance and that title promised just that. The One That Got Away covers 20 years, during which Benjamin and Clara fall in love while at university, break up, and go their separate ways, until one day a catastrophe sends Clara looking for Benjamin again, against her better judgment.
There is a lot here that I really liked about this book. Rixon does really interesting things with the timeline, telling the story in a non-linear way that reveals information in little bits that what can feel like grief in a second chance romance turns into the inevitable momentum of fate. Weaving the story like this allows for surprise and character twists that I think wouldn’t have been as interesting if you had reordered the story in chronological order.
Unfortunately, story structure couldn’t make me root for the main characters’ relationship. As much as this book seems to want the reader to truly believe in fate and destined love, I didn’t buy it. I never truly understood why Benjamin and Clara were so wild about each other, except for they saw each other at two clubs on different nights, and maybe their sexual chemistry. Certainly not enough to understand why after two decades Clara was willing to take such measures to find Benjamin again. Honestly, they both treated each other fairly poorly; there is a part where Benjamin’s friend describes Clara as psycho, and by that point I had seen enough of their relationship that I honestly was willing to agree with the friend. It felt like a relationship that you would look back on as an adult with a mingling of fondness and regret, but not a great love that ruined you for love ever after.
The book is honestly at it’s best when it is plumbing the problems in Benjamin and Clara’s relationship. There are the beginnings of what could have been some truly great scenes and discussions around class and grief and sporting culture, but it felt like each time it stopped short of really getting at the meat of the issue.
As far as I can tell, this is Charlotte Rixon’s first novel, and, despite this novel not really being for me, I look forward to her next works; she is a lovely writer with a great sense of structure and pacing and detail. I hope in her next novels she will allow herself more space to dig deeper into the grittier issues that are on the periphery of Benjamin and Clara’s love story.
The One That Got Away will be out August 15, 2023