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Summary: Why read it when you can get the whole story from a reviewer
Review: To the reader from San Angelo, TX who reviewed this book on November 6, 1998, thanks for revealing the ending. There's no need to read it now.
Rating: 
Summary: enjoyed romantic thread and especially gloomy ending
Review: Although, not one of Schreve's best, I liked the premise and the character development. Since I know of a similar real life story, I find this completely believable. Schreve is a master of the gloomy love story. I always feel thoroughly depressed by her stories, even those with a 'HAPPY" ending. Go Girl!!
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Summary: Wonderfully captivating
Review: I've reread this several times and each time find myself filled with emotion and empathy for the two adult lovers who try to regain what they began as youngsters but have lost along the way. Anita Shreve is one of my favorite authors for the power and beauty of her writing.
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Summary: Star-crossed lovers never find themselves.
Review: Teen-agers fall in love. Go separate ways. Renew correspondence after many years and plan to meet.Both are in unhappy marriages. Due to misdirected plan death for Charles results.A much written plot poorly handled. Mediocre writing. Boring, i.e. skipped many pages.
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Summary: Love Obssessions ... better off with The Last Time They Met
Review: Shreve is a master of romantic regret but this book is a tad melodramatic. Everyone probably wishes or wonders about their first love. Most would be curious to see what would happen if a childhood sweetheart contacted them out of the blue. The story is enveloping and filled with first love obssession but in real-life the events would be considered pathological. Charles Callahan last saw Sian Richards three decades earlier when both were around 14. It seems more disturbing than romantic to think that a man could jeopardize everything for an adolescent crush. The characters are living in trying circumstances which make their love affair a drug of relief. The burdens of a recession, lonely marriages, and a life of struggle only propel Charles and Sian into reckless behavior. Love sickness and addiction is the theme in Where or When. Do not read this book if you're stuck on someone. Do read it if you realize that middle-aged adults acting carelessly is best left to fiction.
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Summary: disappointing insipid drivel
Review: after weight of water and strange fits of passion i looked forward to more shreve. alas, sea glass proved tepid at best (only by a stretch of imagination were characters believable for time/place/circumstances); pilot's wife even more trite ("dead pilot discovered posthumously to have led double life"--hardly an original ship-in-every-port theme). resistance proved abysmally disappointing (no believable foundation/context for characters' supposed depth of love/intensity--shreve's claim of historically factual models notwithstanding). where or when was nadir: implausible, insufficiently drawn characters and motivations suggest shreve churned out/coasted on coattails of previous wins. author does not convince me that a middle-age financial/family failure like charles "succumbs to fate" based on a poorly drawn 1-week adolescent experience that "defines his destiny," or that he and sian can't "make a go of it" because (conveniently) her husband (whom we know virtually nothing about) loses use of his arm (in a suicide attempt??) and the gothic-victorian-missed-letter-under-the-door gimmick dooms charles and sian. i'd like to recycle (read b-u-r-n) my copy to some other unsuspecting innocent--except a gazillion others are out there (rightfully) trying to be disposed of. NOT recommended. sigh
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not her best . . .
Review: First off, let me say that I am a hug fan of Anita Shreve, of tales of long-lost loves, and of tragic endings. So this book should have been made for me, right? Sadly, no. I was very disappointed in this novel. Not for one moment did I care about the main characters; there was nothing in the novel to make me feel any sympathy or understanding for them. I also found some parts of the novel somewhat trite and cliched, especially the parts revolving around the music tape. Still, the writing was very good, and there were some moments of clarity and suspense. There are other Shreve novels that are much more worthwhile.
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Summary: Liked the book, hated the man, hated the ending
Review: Well written, in typical Anita Shreve style, it was an excellent portrayal of the unravelling of a marriage. It didn't matter what the main character's spouse's were like, they were beside the point. The main characters are 2 lonely people who may have left their marriages at some other point anyway. I resented, however, as another reviewer, the male for attending to his affair, instead of his financial problems, not only betraying his wife but also betraying the children and their future. Also, how dare he tell this all to her on Christmas eve? Couldn't he have put aside his own needs for 1 more night? And the ending, it was a cop-out. Shame on Shreve for taking this way out.
Rating:
Summary: Not a love story
Review: The review from The Washington Post says, "...A heart-wrenching, suspenseful story with an unforgettable conclusion, Where or When is also a thoughtful contemporary romance."
I liked the writing, but hated the story, and most of all hated the main character, Charles. Charles is married, with 3 wonderful children whom he adores, and who adore him. Charles is on the brink of financial ruin, and unhappy with life, thus unhappy with his marriage, although the book never really explores the why's of the failing marriage.
Charles is reading the literary reviews one day, and happens upon the picture of a childhood girlfriend. He feels compeled to write to her, knowing he still has strong feelings for her. This is where I started to hate Charles. He knowingly sets out to find this woman with whom he shared his first feelings of love. He hid the picture from his wife, which to me means he knows he's doing something he shouldn't.
While corresponding with Sian, it seems more to me like Charles is stalking her, rather than writing her romantic letters. I can't believe that any woman, after so many years, would deliberately go along with this, esp. after she's told him she didn't want to meet with him. He ignores her, and continues to write to her, at one point driving 3 hours just to see where she lives. Seems a little desparate to me.
What bothered me most was that Charles was on the brink of financial ruin, but was buying Sian gifts, traveling for hours to meet with her, and staying at the inn with her. Who needs a man like that, what could possibly be attractive about a man who's broke, has 3 wonderful children, and a wife? Then, to top it off Charles not only tells his wife of the affair, and that he's leaving her, he also tells her their house is going into foreclosure....all on Christmas eve.
One other reviewer said that there was a note written in crayon by the 12 year old child. Well, first of all, the older child was a girl, and 2nd of all the note written in crayon, which was a heartbreaker for me, WAS written by the 5 year old son, not the 12 year old.
The end isn't heart-wrenching at all, I'm glad it happens that way, except for Sian's last minute of insanity. With a 3 year old daughter of her own, she has real world responsibilites, so get over it!
I did like this book, the way Anita Shreve writes is very compelling. I didn't like the subject matter or the main character, Charles.
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Summary: It's More Realistic Than You Think
Review: I liked this book, and I found it to be exactly right for rekindled romances. And I should know: I have done research on such couples, more than 2000, for 11 years. Real lost lovers DO instantly reunite without regard to consequences. And it doesn't matter what they have accomplished later in life, whether they would ever have fallen in love if they were just meeting that person for the first time. First love is very powerful, actually physically imprinted in the emotional part of the brain. While we on the outside can question the morality of lost lovers who destroy their families, I can tell you that it's realistic nonetheless. I strongly suspect that this book is autobiographical.
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