It did feel like a bit of a cop out. I thought that in the book as well - it was like a classic 'chick lit' story but the writer wanted it to be a bit more sophisticated so he thought 'I know, I'll kill one of them off!' The story wasn't really going anywhere after that and it was an easy direction to take it. It would have been nice if instead, for example, we saw them get together and then their relationship break down, for them to end up as friends again - or something like that. But modern audiences don't like the idea of couples breaking up unless there's a truck in the way.
However I did like the whole one-year-on structure when it came to that. Often in films and TV shows you see a person die and you see their loved ones' instant grief, when anyone who's lost someone will know it can be drastically different a year on, or two years on, and so on, particularly when it's a sudden death. Some people can be relatively calm for weeks or even months and then spiral down years later. So it was interesting to see a glimpse of that in the story, with an optimistic ending.
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