The One That Got Away by Annabel Kantaria

This is a fairly solid book that starts off really well.  Stella and George meet up at their school 15 year year reunion and events begin to spiral beyond their control.  You see they were childhood best friends, that then morphed in to so much more and then George, George decided that Stella wasn't enough for him and left her in the lurch for one of the popular girls, Ness.  Somehow Stella is still alone and George is married to Ness, both of our main protagonists though are very successful business people and have made their own impressions on the world.  Neither of them really needs the other but this is about want and not need.

Part One of the book works really well.  The push and pull between Stella and George; each of them being given the space to explain their side of the story and lay bear their obsessions.  The voices are nicely distinct but I couldn't help but feel that George was somehow lacking on the page and that we never really get to know him in the way we know Stella.  By the end of the first section, moving through the tension of will/they won't they cave in and have an affair, will they both throw caution to the wind and break George's marriage for a legitimate relationship of their own, I was thoroughly hooked.

Unfortunately we then get in to Part Two and it becomes all a little bit too predictable and there is no doubt about what is happening between George and Stella.  Virtually from the very start of this section the reader knows exactly where this is going and how it is going to play out.  Even worse, for me, I felt that there were strong links to Gone Girl in Parts Two and Three - right down to a diary that is not what it seems. 

The third and final part is just bizarre.  Sure enough the characters get what is coming to them and the peripheral bunch of characters that populate the village get the wrong end of the stick.  Then, instead of a nice tidy ending the author decides that what it really needs is the twist of retrograde amnesia.  It left me wanting to bash my head on the wall hoping that I could wipe that out of my own brain.

As a whole it starts strongly and deteriorates throughout the telling until, by the end, you agree with George and Stella - it just all needs to end.  Maybe if it hadn't been made so clear to the reader what was happening in the George/Stella relationship it would have been a much better read, it was just a little too transparent on the plot for me.