The One That Got Away: A Novel
By Melissa Pimentel
St. Martin’s Press, 368 pp.
This retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion will keep you turning pages.
In this lighthearted reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Melissa Pimentel tells the story of a passionate romance that dwindles into lost love. Back from college one summer, Ruby Atlas meets a handsome bartender at a local pub in her small Massachusetts hometown and is swept off her feet. Ethan Bailey is good-looking, charming, and compassionate.
What more could a girl want?
But as the summer ends, Ruby reluctantly decides to pursue her dream career at a posh public-relations firm in Manhattan. Living and working in New York will be the epitome of Ruby’s success, even though it will cost her the relationship with Ethan. She struggles to acclimate to her new job and to the vastly different lifestyle in the city and pretends to be the tough, well-adjusted New Yorker she thinks she should be.
