Benjamin and Clara start dating in university and fall in love. They are made for each other. Until one night and one horrible mistake ruins everything. 20 years later a bombing in their university town will send Clara back to a town she hasn’t been to in 20 years to look for the man she once loved.
This book was not quite what I thought it was going to be but it was better. Clara is a flawed character and she is allowed to be flawed and work through her flaws, as is Benjamin. It’s not often authors let their characters be less then perfect. Dealing with a lot of hard truths and a lot of complicated issues that are handled as such. The characters and situations in this book sit in a grey area, there are no easy black and white parts. I enjoyed this book a lot. I like books that don’t have simple problems and solutions.
Thank you to Net Gallery and Charlotte Rixon for providing me a copy of this book for review.

Family and friends...love and romance. I liked this book. It is a cannot put down story that is fiction...reads like nonfiction. The characters come alive on the pages...the one thing that was distracting...the years...the different times...I prefer linear timelines...and maybe going back to one time...but this book has so many different years that it was difficult to keep up. That being said, I really liked this book. This is a unique story in that everything that should happen does not happen...there are sad instances along with the happy ones. This book was sent to me by Netgalley for review. Thanks to the publisher for the electronic copy. I look forward to more books by this author. There are some frightening acts in this book.

This wasn't the light hearted read that I had anticipated. But I struggled to put it down none the less.
Ben and Clara have an unsettled relationship from the get go and very early on Clara seems clingy and disapproves of Ben wanting part of his life to be separate from her.
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.
They dip in and out of each others life's via email and reunite in person later on unfortunately because of a bomb explosion.
The ending leaves the reader wanting to know if they do rekindle their relationship but unfortunately is not given.

A good plot, and I personally love the going forth between past and present. It's an underrated writing tool I think. An enjoyable read and good characters who feel realistic and true to life.

Thank you @NetGalley for this ARC.

This was a really hard book for me to get through. It was a lot of back and forth between the past and the present and switched POV's. For me, the storyline was a bit anticlimactic.

Thank you NetGalley and Aria & Aries for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.
Content warnings:
- cheating (physically and emotionally)
- Self harm (cutting)
- Mental health issues
- Child SA
- Infertility/ endometriosis
- Manslaughter

From the beginning I found the relationship between Clara and Benjamin to be very awkward. I never felt chemistry between them, and as the story progressed it just felt like a trauma bond. This story includes tropes that I’m personally not interested in, and that I do not condone which made it very hard for me to like/relate to the female main character. I found the female main character to be very immature and unlikeable. Benjamin was okay, he didn’t really stick out to me. I was more impressed by the depth of the side characters rather than the two main characters.

Reading the synopsis made me think that this would be a light-hearted second chance romance, but after finishing I believe this was geared towards women’s fiction. The book was well written, but I don’t think the intent was made clear in the blurb, and I was definitely thrown for a loop.

This book is the literally definition of a mid-life crisis. If you like time jumps, dual POV, and second chance romances then I think you should give this a shot. Please look up content warning and maybe read some reviews before diving into this.

3 stars.

Read and reviewed in exchange for a free copy from NetGalley. I was expecting a fairly light-hearted romance going into this book, yet it dealt with a number of complicated themes. The character portrayal and development was excellent, with three dimensional, flawed, while I wasn't sure about the characters as students, I became increasingly invested in them and was engaged in their story. Although elements of the ending I found implausible, I felt Rixon wrote well and sensitively about complex issues.

I feel quite protective of this book with some of the reviews I've read. Does it cover some dark, triggering topics, yes. But the underlying story is that of love and soulmates. It wasn't as light as I thought it would be, but it was a really pleasant surprise for me to have some real depth to the characters lives beyond falling in love, having an argument and sleeping together. It's beautifully written, emotional and has some shocking twists and turns. A wonderful book, which I feel is being negatively interpreted just because of the Netgalley category it's been put in.

Romantic love, I’ve found, takes different shapes, and presents itself in unique ways over the course of your lifetime. For some your first love is forever and those people know no one else. For others first love is fleeting, for some haunting, and for most unforgettable regardless.

Two years together, twenty years apart, but Benjamin is still Clara’s first thought when she hears about the suicide bombing at his favorite football stadium. Leaving behind her husband and job Clara races to the city under attack in hopes to find news that Benjamin wasn’t hurt in the bombing. The story is about their love, past and what remains in the future. Lots of trigger warnings in this one- suicide bombing, rape, death, child abuse, cancer.

Their connection from so long ago, so strong that Clara can’t help but to constantly wonder (and social media stalk) what Benjamin is up to even though she’s married to another man. Their brief sporadic emails always returned by the other speak that the feelings are still there on both sides.

What happens next? There’s a lot more to it than I initially expected while reading. This book isn’t a light and fluffy women’s rom-com or fiction, there’s some weight to it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Aria & Aria for the opportunity to read early. There will definitely be buzz around this one when it’s released in 2023!

Don't judge a book by its cover-- or title!
This novel is being done a great disservice by its soft, generic romance cover and title, as it's setting up false expectations. '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. In other words, the woman knows how to write.
This is not a sweet, lighthearted book about star-crossed lovers, with frivolous characters. Instead, these characters are grounded in reality, flawed and frustratingly 'real'. Clara isn't the 'cool girl' who can just brush off Benjamin's drunken boys' nights and obsession with football. She's needy and petty and, while not exactly admirable, relatable nonetheless. Benjamin isn't willing to just lay down and kowtow to Clara, but neither is he willing (or able) to see where he has ownership in their issues. If you're looking for simple, jovial escapism, this book may disappoint you, as it's far more literary than the advertising is making it seem. But taken for what it is-- a well-crafted character study-- it's beautiful and worthy of praise.

This was so much darker than I expected it to be, even knowing from the description that it involved some heavy stuff. But it also dragged me into their world in a way that was unexpectedly thorough, and definitely made it different than just a love story.

When Benjamin and Clara first meet, they both feel it. 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.

But fate has different plans for them, and after a traumatic and life-altering incident at the end of their time at university, the two are torn apart.

Two decades later, Clara is at work when she hears of a bombing at a football game in the town where they fell in love. Dropping everything, Clara gets on a train and lets the magnet draw her back in.

Alternating between Clara’s journey to return to Benjamin, and the history of how they came to be, this story is about love - but not in any of the ways you may think.

"a simple life with people i love" that's what Benjamin wants. It feels as if that is what he has with his first love Clara. Meeting whilst at university. The roller-coaster of heightened first love. Underlying current of family situations. Then it all changes.
Neither of them can forget about the other and keep checking on them via social media twenty years later. Can they reconnect? Should they try to reconnect?

Oh this book had so much promise. But just fell short for me. I just couldn't get I to it and I really, really really did try. I'm so sorry

I'm afraid I couldn't get into this book - the beginning felt like quite a jarring perspective for me, and I didn't warm to either of the two main characters.

The story of Clara and Benjamin is romantics, tragic, and beautiful. You can’t help but feel the emotions of the characters so deeply and growing up in young love. Life threw battles they had to overcome to get to a steady place. I do think there should be a TW for sexual assault at the beginning of the book for future readers

Ok, so I thought this would be a nice second-chance romance. And although it was that in a very broad sense, this is not the light-hearted feel-good romance I expected. I couldn't get into it as it bogged me down and I struggled to keep reading.

3 stars because it was still well written, just not the book for me.

Thank you to the publisher for kindly providing me with an ARC via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's for the e-arc.
2.5 stars, rounded up
Please review any trigger warnings before reading this book! (and there should be MANY warnings) I would definitely not classify this as a romance, so the description is more than a little misleading. There is absolutely nothing feel-good about this story. In fact, it's rather sad. There is a very unlikeable main character in Clara; I'm not sure what it is about her that any other character liked (never mind loved) about her. Even though I didn't like it, I have to say it was well written, which is the only reason I'm not giving it a lower rating. If you're looking for light romance, this is not it.

I loved The One That Got Away by Charlotte Rixon. Clara just jumped off the page with her grace and vibrance and Benjamin seemed like a teddy bear of a guy who needed someone to bring him out of his shell. Clara did that and they planned a future together after university but circumstances didn't allow that to happen. Twenty years later, after a bombing, Clara sees him on TV and goes looking for him, changing both of their lives.

Thank you to the author, Aria & Aries, and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for the ARC! This wasn’t a favorite of mine, but I respect the story in that it included very heavy and difficult subjects to write about with similar events happening currently in the world. I struggled with all of the timelines, I found myself having to flip back and forth a lot to make sure I was following. At one point I even tried to write a few things down! Overall it wasn’t exactly the true love second chance story I was expecting and I did not know it covered as many heavy situations as it did, but I was happy I read it.

Thank you NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

I requested this book because of the amount of great reviews it has and I'm so glad I did. This book completely surpassed my expectations in so many ways and I wish I already had the physical copy of it to put on my shelf!