Lip Service

I guide a site on fetishism...and this is the best book of anerotic nature that I have ever read! MJ Rose managed to write a sexythriller without insulting the intelligence of her readers. I loved it!

Ms. Rose develops her characters with care and finesse. Even the minor characters peopling this world are three-dimensional and breathing with life. Every nuance of emotion, every scent, scene and sensory artifice is intact, leading the reader through a story that seems personal and real. On the surface, Lip Service appears to be just another erotic story about a frustrated woman trapped in a sterile marriage and living a life of self-deception. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lip Service is a compelling headfirst dive into the deepest part of the human emotional complex that drives and motivates us to be honest sexual beings. It delves into a part of human sexuality that most people run screaming from when they confront the blatant, unvarnished part of their psyche that reveals raw human need. Ms. Rose has managed to write a story baring the naked 'self'. Not just about her secret self but all selves; the inner core of sexuality we all foster, hide from and secretly enjoy knowing exists. Lip Service compels readers to face the truth of their own false life illusions. It reaches deep inside and dredges up a part of you that used to be pure, honest and uninhibited. And, I, for one, rediscovered my younger wilder days of freedom of expression and the deep euphoria of honesty in sex.

Once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. A daring new intelligent novel. I found myself annoyed with the 'good Julia's' personality. I enjoyed the later part of the tale much more than the beginning. It was her strength, empowerment, and openness that aroused me most.After I turned the final page I longed for more.

I wasn't sure I'd like this first novel ... seemed gimmicky, at first -- phone sex being the catch.Forget that cynicism. This novel grabs readers from the get-go -- it's a twisted tale of lives disintegrating (then rebuilding) in The Big Apple within "respectable" lives -- and a "respectable" sexual-services organization.M.J. Rose holds nothing back. Her female protagonist takes us into the immediate intimacies of how an intelligent, compelling character can find her life and those she loves turned on their respective heads when nothing is as it appears -- and everything's at stake.I couldn't put Lip Service down. It's a spine-tingling read for anyone who's ever wondered what it would be like to say or hear: "What are you wearing?" ...C.B.

"Goes farther and Deeper than VOX" M.J. Rose's LIP SERVICE probably won't be a best seller, but only because it's self- published and falls into the netherworld of the erotic novel genre. That's unfortunate, because this book is more than one-handed reading-- it's just plain good reading with some super hot spots. The author has managed to incorporate details of the phone sex life into a literary novel with intricate plot, fully developed characters and dramatic tension. Woven into a normal story of a normal woman and her somewhat normal, troubled marriage, is the story spend her time and earn her livelihood making strange men come over the phone. I highly recommend Lip Service as a work of fiction that deals honestly with phone sex while maintaining a fairly high literary standard. For those who thought Nicholson Baker made the ultimate and deeper by focusing on the real world of the real call girl. Reviewed By Marcy Sheiner, editor of Herotica 4 and 5 (Plume) and the Write Erotica, due out in Spring 1999 (Cleis), and is writing Sex for the Clueless, to be published by Citadel in the fall of 1999. [email protected]