I recommend this book to anyone looking for realistic fiction and who loves the idea of examining life through reading. Both characters are flawed in different ways which makes them each feel like they don't fit in their university community. I greedily raced through the book, wanting to find out how their story unfolded, and which sequence of events led them to the same city on one fateful day.

The book has a lot of angst, especially in the earlier timeline, but it’s all well-written and I grew to care for and root for these characters. Twenty years later, they've built separate lives, careers and families but haver never stopped thinking about the one that got away. They both had flaws, issues and problems throughout their lives, but the fault for these didn’t lie with one specific person but more as a result of what happened over their lives. Clara and Benjamin come from very different worlds,yet find themselves enmeshed in a tragic love story. They are meant for each other, meant to be together - even if the start of their relationship is awkward, even if they fight and behave irrationally and lose themselves in each other.I totally recommend this book, it’s so good I feel I don’t have enough words to express how it caught me from the start till the end, how invested I was with these characters! Many have complained that one of the main characters, Clara, is deeply unlikeable, but I found her manic and unreasonable reactions very evocative of my teenage experiences with relationships! Across the miles and spanning decades, Charlotte Rixon's The One That Got Away is a sweeping, poignant story about growing up, growing apart, the people who first steal our hearts, and the surprising, winding roads that love can take us on, for readers of Jill Santopolo, Rosie Walsh, and Colleen Hoover. Infact right from page 1 there is nothing typical about this book making it a unique and a different read.

It really sets the tone for the reader and allows them to forge their own views and become aware that this does happen, especially concerning Aiden’s storyline. In the earlier timeline, they are young, passionate, and a bit immature; in the later timelines, they are more guarded and mature, just like most people. There are some pretty great twists along the way that are cleverly hidden in plain sight, which keeps the momentum of the story going right when it could start to get predictable. This was so much darker than I expected it to be, even knowing from the description that it involved some heavy stuff.

Twenty years later, they both have their own lives, until a bombing is reported in the city where they first met, causing Clara to go across the country to find Benjamin and confront the events that tore them apart. It wasn't necessary to keep this hanging - the book already starts with a "cliffhanger" where there is someone who bombs a soccer stadium and we don't know who it is (we do find out by the end).

Charlotte Rixon' is not a debut author taking a stab at her first novel, as I'd first thought, but rather she's the creation of Charlotte Duckworth, a bestselling author with several books under her belt, albeit in another genre. The One that Got Away follows Clara and Ben over the course of about 20 years, from the time they met in university to when they are middle aged. The connection between Benjamin and Clara is so strong that at times it feels like a danger to themselves and to those around them. If you’re a fan of second chances, an intriguing plot and character growth, this is the book for you!I loved these characters, but I was annoyed at their sometimes rash decisions in the earlier timeline, and like many of us when we were young, they didn’t always make good decisions. An incident changes the path in which they were both heading and I feel that this should have been the jolt that they needed to get their lives on track but this doesn't happen. Clara's inability to have sex with her husband, Benjamin's failed relationships, the birth of a son - picking himself back up after a world of hurt.

A devastating event on the last day of their university takes their lives in very different directions. After 20 years, Clara sees Benjamin and she needs to reach out to see if what could’ve been can still be, but is it too late? The modern-day plot line kept the book moving forward while the 2000 plot line helped you understand the characters better. It is not simply a love story it is more about the character's choices and how they've changed throughout the years, about their emotions and struggles.The dual POVs and alternating timelines kept me up all night reading because I needed to know what the other character was experiencing after getting half of the story. I do feel there were certain parts which could have been elaborated on a little further to add even more depth and dimension to an otherwise engaging and heartwarming tale of a what might have been romance.