The writing in this book is beautiful. He also does a truly masterful job of making you believe in the love between the narrator, Will, and Claire. But that masterful accomplishment ends up causing the book's biggest flaw. To me, it didn't really make sense that they wasted their love and that she left without the reader really understanding why. She even comes back later in the book and leaves again! Why? (She even has money at that point and could help Will with his financial problems, but it's as though that possibility didn't even occur to the author, let alone the protagonists.)

The last quarter of the book also loses something. You don't really feel as though you're living through the events with Will. He's simply recounting them. Ho hum. The language is still beautiful, but the book lost its grip on me.