I think this book is great. One thing that I really like (although it was slightly annoying at first, it grew on me) was Wheelock's insistence on relating every English word with Latin roots back to the Latin. (Kind of reminds you of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" where the father keeps saying "X comes from the Greek word Y ... there you go.") For example, in chapter 12 it introduces the perfect tenses; the footnote notes that this comes from "per + factus". It really makes you understand where our words come from, even (perhaps especially) words that we use so often, we take them for granted - like "perfect" - and gives you a new appreciation for how indebted English is to Latin.
I would certainly agree with one thing that I have seen in other reviews: read every part of this book carefully. Everything in the main part (the chapters) is important. In fact, in this way, it shows its roots (as a set of study notes originally distributed to Latin classes by Wheelock).
The book, like many grammars, doesn't have a huge number of original Latin readings during the course. The later editions fix this somewhat with the addition of the translation sections to each chapter. But I would recommend you get another source of readings to be used, such as the companion book Workbook for Wheelock's Latin or Groton and May's 38 Latin Stories (or better, buy both).
This book takes sort of a middle ground when it comes to teaching grammar. On the one hand, there is the pure inductive method (which some of the people who gave this book bad reviews favor). For a young child, pure induction makes sense; but for an adult, I don't think it does at all. True, I learned English by induction; but I'm an adult now. I learn differently than I did then. On the other hand, there is a morphological type of approach, where you learn only a few forms and a set of rules to apply those forms. I actually think this method works very well, but Wheelock's doesn't take it.
Wheelock's takes the traditional deductive memorization route of teaching, which was more difficult for me than it could have been. It has its detractors, but many, many adults have successfully been taught Latin over the years using this method, which is something you can't say for the others.
I cannot agree with those other reviewers who say that LaFleur's attempts at humor (such as the "Latina est gaudium" sections) take away from the book. On the contrary, though some of the puns are quite bad (I think Dr. LaFleur would agree :-) I found them enjoyable and a nice break from serious language study.
Two other cautions about the book:
1. When I first started, I didn't pay as much attention to the exercises in the back as I should have. Don't make the same mistake I did! Assiduously ("ad + sedere" - see, it's catching?) do the exercises! If you just skim the chapters, as I did at first, you will not get it! I think at least some of the negative reviews were from people trying to get by doing the minimum possible work, which means not doing the exercises. You get out of it what you put into it.
2. You may have to come up with some of your own devices to help memorize the endless tables of conjugations ("com + iugare"), etc. For example, I was completely ("com + plere" - ok, I won't do it any more) stumped until I made myself a sheet with "hic, haec, hoc, huius, ... ille, illa, illud ... etc." randomly laid out and spent about an hour going through that sheet. (This is not so much a criticism of this book as of the complexity of Latin in the first place.)
One more hint: unless you really, really have to, don't spend a lot of your brain cells on memorizing positions of long and short vowels. Unless you're planning on writing a lot of Latin (mostly poetry), it's just not that important. If you recognize vowel length and how it affects accent, that's enough for most people. (I am not counting in this fortunate group (a) people who are taking Latin for credit or (b) people who want to teach Latin. They probably have to learn the vowel lengths.)
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