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Summary: An intense, erotic phychological love story.
Review: Lip Service is an intense, erotic phychological love story. M. J. Rose has crafted a pychological thriller that is both disturbing and convincing. The book is fast paced and will grab you from page one and pull you into the world of Julia Sterling. The book gets deep into the psychological relationship of Julia and her husband and, especially, of Julia herself. She not only receives a sexual awakening but, also, a psychological awakening. The book was a compelling and satisfying novel.
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Summary: Intense psychological novel with sex and mystery.
Review: As a writer of erotica and mystery, I enjoyed M.J Rose's book LIP SERVICE very much.It was written well, holding my attention at all times. The erotica part of this was also attention holding as was the mystery and the involvement of all characters. A great psychological novel and an easy read. A MUST on your Xmas list or in fact any list. Deni Richter
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Summary: "This is a real page-turner
Review: "Well-written" "The characters seem real" "We care about the characters and what happens to them" "This is a real page-turner" "The author skillfully creates sights and smells that make the book come to life" "Although LIP SERVICE is fiction, it reads like non-fiction." -- Sylvia K. Los Angeles Librarian.
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Summary: Hard to put down erotic novel with many twists
Review: A well-plotted novel involving sex, lies, and audiotape. Julia, suffering in a 14-year marriage with a domineering and asexual man who only wants her to adorn his endless fundraising parties, gets a freelance assignment to write a book about a sex therapy clinic. To research the book, she becomes a phone sex therapist. From this spirals out an intricately woven tale of deceptions, criminal activity, and other mysterious goings on--with an ending that may surprise. A good read.
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Summary: The best book I've read this summer!
Review: Stuck in a passionless marriage to a overbearing, self-absorbed (albeit handsome)lout, Julia Sterling, our believable and likeable heroine, finds the courage to do those things her husband has expressly forbidden, and in the process, gain the strength he desperately doesn't want her to have. Paul, Julia's husband, is so wrapped up in his role as a psychiatrist and director of a prominent charity that he has lost touch with his feelings (if he ever had any), his sexuality, and probably his whole self. Sam, a sex therapy specialist and a friend of Paul's, is so wrapped up in _everyone's_ sexuality that he's lost touch with reality too, though in a subtler way. After the look Rose gives us at the strange world of psychiatry and its practitioners, phone sex begins to look perfectly normal. Julia, since marrying Paul, has been playing the role of obedient and helpful hostess and wife, but through a job at Sam's sex clinic, which offers such unconventional therapies as phone sex, she begins to break out of the characters she had forced herself to play for so long to eventually find her true voice. This book might not be the best choice for you if your favorite magazine is a Focus on the Family publication, but for anyone else, "Lip Service" is a wonderful leisure-time read that is next to impossible to put down.
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Summary: This book should be savored bit by bit.
Review: This novel has been waiting such a very long time for a review from yours truly. I am so ashamed. I could make excuses, computer problems and my four year old stealing my computer time. But, all in all, it has pretty much been my fault. However, it is the truth when I say that I was so moved by this book that I could never hope to find sufficient words to describe my feelings. Very much so. The back cover says this about Lip Service. "At once a sophisticated love story and a psychological thriller, Lip Service is both seductive and sinister." Also, "Not since Erica Jong's Fear of Flying has a novel so successfully examined the relationship between sexuality and identity." Lip Service is erotic. So much so that during my course of reading, my husband was a very happy man. An extremely happy man. The main character, Julia Sterling, is as strong. a female character as you will find in fiction today. She becomes even more so as the story progresses. I do not want to give away plot. Lip Service should be savored bit by bit. As if unwrapping a special gourmet chocolate treat. Because treat it is indeed. And I, for one, will be savoring the memory of it for a long time to come.
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Summary: A compelling, disturbing and deeply satisfying novel
Review: Rarely have I read such a successful blend of fiction andpsychological ingsight. As a professional, I was impressed. As awoman, I was moved. I started reading Lip Service on a Friday evening and read until late that night, picked it up again as soon as I could on Saturday. And was sorry when I was done. The story had me hooked. Lip Service is both erotic and smart and I have found myself reccommending it to patients who are dealing with their own sexuality issues as well as reccommending it to friends who just love to read. Lip Service is a compelling, disturbing and deeply satisfying novel.
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Summary: A Stylish First Novel
Review: Take a novel in the style of Danielle Steel. Improve the writing by making it a tighter story with believable characters and more substance. Add a sexual theme as well as a heroine capable of saying a bunch of words Steel's characters probably don't even know, and you get the drift of Lip Service, a stylish first novel by M.J. Rose. Lip Service's Julia Sterling is an upper east side matron in a marriage that is satisfying financially but not emotionally. Julia's husband is handsome and successful. He's also entirely self-absorbed and doesn't sound especially nice to be around, to boot. A nervous breakdown while she was in college left Julia emotionally weakened and ripe to fall in love with a man like Paul: a controlling single father whose wife had recently died. Paul, a psychiatrist, is utterly out of touch with his own feelings and sexuality. When an opportunity to work on a book about an institute that does sexual research presents itself, Julia takes it: over her husband's protests and behind his back. Her own research for the book finds her doing telephone calls of the phone sex variety,and this device provides much of the erotica for this erotic novel. Though the plot sounds like a cliché intro to the erotic, there's little that's clichéd about Lip Service. Rose doesn't take us down a particularly nasty road and the journey is more one of an adult's self discovery than sexual reawakening. What makes Lip Service work -- aside from Rose's strong and confident voice -- is Julia's road to self understanding. Her emergence -- as trite as it sounds -- as a whole person. Though Julia is undeniably flawed, aren't we all? Her imperfections make her entirely believable, her failures make her human and her personal breakthroughs give us hope.
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Summary: Neither particularly sexy nor interesting
Review: I found this tale to read as an insult to the legitimate world ofphone-sex workers, which might be forgiveable if it was at leastsexy. But the main character is constantly shocked and ready to vomit all the time, which is not exactly my idea of the erotic. The plot is absurd -- the police work resembles nothing in real life; the idea of a fourteen year old child being hurt (burned with a cigarette during sex) is repeated over and over as though this could make it erotic; and men come off as pretty unattractive human beings. Overall, quite a disappointment. Read "Vox." Or a good mystery novel.
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Summary: Lip Service is a great read!
Review: M. J. Rose's "Lip Service" is a slick, elegant odyssey into the darker corners of erotic fantasy, and a first-rate read. Submerged in a loveless marriage to a successful psychiatrist, Julia Sterling has become increasingly dissatisfied with her role as trophy wife and helpmeet. Against her domineering husband's stated wishes, she begins a comissioned book about a controversial sex clinic. The clinic's charismatic director persuades Julia that she needs actual experience as a therapist to validate her conclusions, and before she knows it, he submerges her in the steamy world of phone sex for pay. With each succeeding conversation, Julia loses more of her inhibitions and is drawn further and further into the sex clinic's shadowy activities. In the course of indulging her callers' fantasies, she becomes increasingly addicted to her newly discovered power over men. Only after she learns that nothing is as it appears, does Julia find the courage to contront th! e truth about herself and to take control of her life.
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