Rating: 
Summary: She Got me!
Review: I read over the negative reviews of Anita Shreve's ingenious new novel "The Last Time They Met" and felt compelled to add my two cents because I really enjoyed it! I fond the conceit of telling the story backwards to be very daring and well executed. Brava! On the last page I felt many emotions; sadness but also joy that I hadn't seen it coming. I closed the book and smiled thinking: "Anita! You got me! Good one!"
Rating: 
Summary: Dreadful
Review: I appreciate a good plot twist as much as the next person, so when I read that this novel featured an original and unexpected ending, I took the book out of the library. Despite the fact that the very first page contained two sentences so densely overwritten that I had to read them multiple times to glean their meanings, I perservered. Three hundred pages of melodrama later, the big surprise was merely [an old] trick. ...Frankly, I was furious with myself for having wasted a day on this awful book. At least I didn't have to buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Waste of Time.....
Review: I was saving this book for vacation next month, but finally had to break down and start reading it. At first, I couldn't put it down. I was thrilled with the characters Linda and Thomas. About mid-way through the book (somewhere in Africa), I CHEATED! I read the last few pages. What a total disappointment and sell-out. Was the author thinking that this story should end (or begin) this way for the sake of a future screenplay? C'mon Ms. Shreve, your readers deserve better.......
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing and a bit too subtle
Review: After only a few paragraphs into Shreve's latest novel, I was confused but undaunted! But the more I read, the more I realized that this was going to be a tricky tale, full of too much sublety and subterfuge. At the end, I was exasperated and irritated that I, like all readers I'm sure, was forced to go back to the beginning to understand what was going on. It's hard to believe that this is from the same author who wrote FORTUNE'S ROCKS.
Rating:
Summary: What a writer!
Review: This is the first book I have read by Shreve and am now hooked, have since read Weight of Water, an earlier book of hers and features the character Thomas who is in this book! Very compelling writer!
Rating: 
Summary: Poor ending
Review: The ending of this novel is disjointed from the rest of the story and is quite cowardly. Why Kenya? What about Peter? And Jack's death? And the aunt? Vincent? Linda's children? Characters made up in the mind of the protagonist? Come on, Shreve. You've lost a reader.
Rating:
Summary: Flabbergasted in Florida
Review: Having read previous books by the author, I believed I knew more or less what twists and turns to expect. Plot twists notwith-standing, her writing makes one feel as if you are there. I cried, I held my chest, I felt the love, the loss, the desperation, the resignation that man may make plans, but the universe has designs of its own. I couldn't put it down. Then I read the final page. I put it down, dumbfounded, and read it again. I wasn't sure what I had read. I have never experienced this type of feeling after reading a book. I didn't know if I loved it or hated it, I just knew I had to read it all over again.
Rating:
Summary: I was disappointed!
Review: Many of the other reviews say what I feel about this book's ending. I enjoy Shreve's books because they tend to focus on mature relationships, and I'm always looking for books like that, but I think Shreve was looking for an ending to this book that the reader could not possibly predict and she did it with a gimmick. Foreshadowing always keeps the reader turning pages but the technique has to be fair too. Read "Where or When" or "The Pilot's Wife" for her better books.
Rating:
Summary: Not funny
Review: I picked this book up hoping for another tight and imaginative story like The Pilot's Wife. I was disappointed. The book was alternately confusing, frustrating, boring, and contrived. The ending reminds one of the ending of The Sixth Sense, except that you *expect* a twist at the end of the movie. The ending here leaves one shocked yet also terribly angry at being manipulated by the author in this way. I am also upset that this is somewhat of a sequel to The Weight of Water. I may not read it now and I just got it from the library yesterday!! Really frustrating!
Rating:
Summary: Uncharacteristically dull considering it's Shreve!
Review: Linda Fallon meets up with an old lover, Thomas Janes, at a writer's convention in Canada whom she hasn't seen in twenty-six years. Their love, which began in high school, experiences extreme tragedy, a 10-year hiatus when they remeet in Africa (unfortunately they are both wed to another), and then yet another period of silence before the Canada convention. For those of you who read and loved The Weight of Water, this is something of a sequel. It is the same Thomas who was a secondary character in that novel which makes the story interesting as well. Shreve organizes the book in backwards chronological order if there is such a thing, telling of the Canada convention meeting, the Africa saga and, finally, the beginning of their affair in high school. All of these features offer great hope for Shreve's latest novel. She has organized her book creatively and produced a wonderful love story that spans over thirty years, yet the writing is just not the same. It is sappy and not entirely congruent. I was shocked to find a Shreve novel I considered less than average as I have felt nothing but extreme admiration and enthusiasm for all of her work thus far. I'm sure every writer goes through a phase now and then. Hopefully The Last Time They Met is just a phase.
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