The One That Got Away by Charlotte Rixon

 

The One That Got Away by Charlotte Rixon.

Published 2nd February 2023 by Aria, Head of Zeus.

From the cover of the book:

Two years together. Twenty years apart. One day to change their story.

Benjamin's world is turned upside down the day he meets Clara. Instinctively, he knows that she is his person and he is hers, but the events of one devastating night will take their lives in very different directions.

20 years later, a bombing is reported in the city where Clara and Ben met, and she is pulled back to a place she tries not to remember and the first love she could never forget. Searching for Ben, Clara prays that twenty years of silence is about to end.

But is it too late to put right what went wrong?

This is not a love story. But it is a story of first love, of the mistakes people make, and the lengths they'll go to put things right.

***********

Benjamin has spent his adult life thinking about Clara, the young woman he was sure he was destined to spend his life with. Twenty years have passed since the tragic night that tore their relationship apart, and the two years they spent together have had a significant impact on the years that have followed.

Clara too has never gotten over her first love Benjamin, or the tragic way their relationship came to an end. Over the past twenty years, she has frequently thought about how things could have turned out differently, if they had been able to overcome the tragedy that parted them. 

When a bomb goes off in the crowded football stadium in the city where they met, Clara knows she cannot rest until she knows if footie fan Benjamin survived the blast. She throws caution to the wind and heads north on a reckless quest to find the man she cannot forget, whatever the consequences.

This is a story of all consuming first love, and how it can shape your life in the years that follow. Charlotte Rixon does an incredible job in telling this story, moving back and forth between the intense two years Clara and Benjamin spent together at university, and vignettes from their lives in the twenty years that have passed since their relationship came to a shocking end. In parallel, Clara's desperate search for Benjamin over a single day plays out, to beautifully to weave all the threads together.

From the very beginning, we know that there is a moment when Clara and Benjamin's relationship was broken beyond repair, impacting their ability to form fulfilling relationships in the future, but you do not learn what really happened until the threads of the past and present collide near the end of the story. Rixon keeps the suspense going with accomplished flair, while you try to understand what when on between these two young people.

The focus is very much on relationships throughout, from the fervent passion of youth, which Rixon describes with heart-aching authenticity; to liaisons between people who were never destined to be happy together. She uses the experiences of Clara and Benjamin to highlight some very difficult subjects along the way, particularly around addiction, abuse, illness, expectation, and mental health. This makes for some distressing scenes, but each and every one has a vital part to play in where Rixon is leading you. I would love to wax lyrical about how she does this with impressive insight and sensitivity, but to do so would inevitably involve spoilers, so I will leave you to discover how deftly she does this for yourselves.

This book held me spellbound, and I consumed it in one heart-wrenching session, unable to turn away until I knew where the story would lead. There is a lot of pain in these pages, and you will find yourself yearning for events to to turn out differently, but perhaps what happens between Clara and Benjamin is inevitable given the anguish and insecurity of the two damaged young people they are when they meet. This is not a love story as such, but it does examine poignant facets of romantic love and love of family and a way that truly tugs on your heartstrings - and in the end it leaves you with an uplifting message of hope. This is superbly written, unforgettable story, and it will stay with me for a long time. 

The One That Got Away is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.

Thank you to Aria for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

Charlotte Rixon is the pen name of Charlotte Duckworth, USA Today-bestselling author of suspense fiction published by Quercus. 

Charlotte studied Classics at Leeds University and went on to gain a PGDip in Screenwriting. She worked for many years as a magazine journalist, and is a graduate of the Faber Academy 'Writing A Novel' course.