What readers think of The Last Time They Met, plus links to write your own review.

What a great book!!! This was the first book that I read by Shreve and at first I didn't like it. I really couldn't tell where this stroy was going. After I finished it, I couldn't stop thinking about it. After I had time to "digest" the story I thought it was wonderful. What a shocking ending, I never saw it coming. This book was so terrific that I have went on to read (and love) many more of Shreve's books.

I enjoyed the book but feel that its the type of book you have to read twice, since the end was so shocking. I had to read the last page over and over again to realize that this was all in Thomas' imagination and that really devastated me. I was born in Kenya so found this book particulary good.
NSL - Australia

Shreeve admits that she wrote the early years first. The book seems to have two separate stories. Oh yeah, I get it. She wants to talk about a life unlived and the power of unresolved guilt. But it seemed to me that the two stories never really meshed. I didn't get how Linda evolved from that troubled teenager to the accomplished adult she later became. I got bored with the passionate story of Linda and Thomas in their later years. (Nothing new here. Seemed to be made for a movie. ) However, the story about the early years held promise. I would have preferred that story, developed honestly.

A friend sent me the book and I would have liked to rave about it but I wasted my time by reading it. It is banal from start to finish.

The prose is acceptable; the depth is not. It's difficult to believe other readers fell in love with it. The Last Time They Met is not fine literature. I honestly can't call it thus.

Can you say 'cheesy, Lifetime television for women'?

The unrealistic drama drove me crazy. I finally had to put the book down when I read of Thomas explaining to Linda of his wife's affair and she commented <<edited for potential plot spoiler>>. Come on! A dead husband, a divorce, an abortion, a dead child, and an alcoholic gay son, all within the first 80 pages! I found this all hard to stomach. I was afraid to read any further for fear of more deaths and the like.
The reviews praise the author for her style of telling the story from the present day to the past, but I found Anita Shreve's style of telling the story backwards, distracting. There was no way of telling when she was talking about the present day or the past. I was forced to read pages over again to really figure out what she was talking about.

Over all, I would have to give a big thumbs down for "The Last Time They Met". The woman in my book group who recommended this will be reprimanded harshly.

Dear Readers and Potential Readers,

I found this story un-bearably drab and, consequently, I was not able to complete the book. Despite moving backward, the story was very slow; and I do mean *very* slow. I constantly found myself thinking, "Is it possible to use massive amounts of words, yet say nothing?", which was exactly what Shreve did. She used too many words, yet said nothing. The character development was near non-existant. A lot was written about Linda; however, I did not get any sense of who Linda really was, nor for what she stood. So after several dozen pages, I couldn't care less about Linda or her life. Additionally, Shreve's writing style in this book was remarkably distracting! Firstly, her use of parenthesis was downright distressing. The parenthesis statements would go on for half or more of the page; so long, in fact, that you were forced to re-read the beginning of the sentence (or paragraph) just to get a sufficient grip on what was just written. So it goes without saying that you could conceivably spend over a minute on one single page. Secondly, quotes were not used when the characters had dialogue. Instead of quoting the dialogue; Shreve, for some entirely arcane reason, saw fit to italicize the dialogue. I completely understand wanting to be original; but originality to point of interference might tend to deter, thus loosing the audience. And this book sure lost me. In short, nothing about this book was spell bounding, captivating or mesmerizing as some reviews have professed. It was not a 'can't-put-it-down pageturner'; franky, I found it quite easy to put this one down.

- A Nascent Reader

VERY CONFUSING AND POORLY WRITTEN

I just took some time to read several reviews of Anita Shreves "The Last Time They Met" I am glad to see I am not the only one dumbfounded with the ending. I re-read the ending and speculated that Thomas <<edited for potential plot spoiler>>. To me, the ending diminished the genuineness of the love itself.