Customer Reviews

Sheet Music

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
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2 star:		(1)
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I love her books they keep you guessing and you keep on reading to find out what happens. The characters you read about are everyday people and you feel like you know them. I read 3 of her books and i like her writing. It is a great book and you can't put the book down. I recommed eveyone to read her books. I can't wait for her next one. Thanks

M. J. Rose keeps the reader interested to the point that they can't put the book down. Each book that she has written I find she gives each character a unique personality. You want to know what will happen in the next chapter with the character. I feel that anyone who picks up one of her books will be happy that they did.

Sheet Music brought back so many memories of my own mother, gone now for over 20 years! Rose's portrayal of the bond between mother and daughter is masterful!! I was 32 again and _was_ Justine -- smelling my mother's particular fragrances of powder and perfume, seeing her scarf of jewel tones, hearing phrases that I had pushed to the back of my mind. The recollections brought both laughter and tears.The prose is exceptional and underscored beautifully by the music that fills the book like surround sound fills a room. This combination created by the author for her Justine to finally greive and heal is insightful for the reader as well.Sheet Music is the first book I have read by M J Rose -- but it definitely will not be the last.

I read SHEET MUSIC around the ninth anniversary of my mother's death. Through Justine, I relived so many of the emotions a daughter must overcome after losing a mother.

MJ Rose paints evocative pictures of our souls with words. "No. Without my mother, I was not myself. And sometimes I think I am still not myself."

Through SHEET MUSIC we follow Justine's journey to find her new self--her motherless daughter new self. As we travel with Justine we are reminded of the smells that we associate with our own mothers.

M.J. Rose's "Sheet Music" combines elements of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" and M.F.K Fisher's writing on family and food with Rose's signature undertones of eroticism and suspense. As you read, you're likely to give longing looks to both your kitchen and bedroom, but you're also likely to want to call your mom, first.

Justine Pagett, a jounalist who suffered a set-back in her career because while having an affair with one of world's greatest chefs she decides to write his profile and reveal a devasting secret that will ruin him. Of course, the article is printed because of it's sensationalism, but at the terrible cost of Justine's alienation from the jounalistic world where unethical behavior is not tolerated.

At the time she is living in Paris where she has fled after the death of her mother. She leaves behind her father and sister and bears what borders on hatred for them. To Justine, her mother was everything and the loss is unbearable.

She now is in a situation where she cannot practice her journalistic skills, her savings are dwindling and the big question is how to get back in everyone's graces. She realizes she must write a piece so important that she cannot be turned down.

Sophie DeLyon, an eccentric classical composer and director who created the institution of Euponia for america's most gifted prodiges, has commisioned Justine to do her biography. Unheard of in jounalistic circles since Sophie has never even granted an interview. This is the chance Justine has been hoping for and she welcomes it with open arms.

And so the volution begins and is spun into an almost unfathomable mystery. Justine must go back to New York and face the ghost-like places she and her mother shared...she must eventually face her father and sister...and after all her correspondence with Miss DeLyon she looks forward to their meeting at Euphonia...and a confrontation with her former lover, a lover who seduced her with his wonderful music. A composer of deeply sensual and evocative compostions. We feel the playing of this music and sense the effect of it because of how M.J. Rose presents it to us.

The sensuality in this very well written novel is pervasive. Everything about Justine is portrayed sensually...her senses are so well tuned...

Her sense of smell: raised in a family where her father was a chef and her mother a chocolatier..the kitchen aromas return to her again and again..and her mother's perfume, her father's pipe. She misses nothing and remembers all.

Her senses of sight and hearing bring us wonderful pictures and sounds of both New York and Paris and her imagined images of her mother.

Her sense of touch makes her love making,our love making.

So softly and beautifully written...so deeply seductive...delving into the passionate depths of both heart and soul. The prose of M. J. Rose actually caresses and seduces the reader in a most beautiful and unforgettable way.

Take this jouney with Justine through her loss, through her sorrow, her fears and her loves. Through the mysteries of not only Sophie DeLyon, but the mystery that is Justine herself.

If seduction is an art, then M.J. Rose is one of the masters. Her talent lies in recognizing that anyone and anything can be a seducer --- a cello concerto, a savory bruschetta, or seashell. Her last novel FLESH TONES was breathtakingly sensual. Now, in SHEET MUSIC, she takes seduction to a new level.

Justine Pagett, a woman who was a child star as the junior member of a mother-daughter team of cookbook writers, has spent a lifetime surrounded by the intoxicating smells of the kitchen. She learned early from both her parents, who were stellar cooks, that food holds power and the ability to enthrall. When her mother, her lifeblood, dies, Justine runs away from her grief and her family --- and into the arms of a chef who would be her momentary undoing, a chef who seduces her with apple slices and honey from Provence. "My lips close over the firm flesh. I bite down. Smell lavender. Feel sunshine. Taste a combination of tart and sweet. Hear the crisp snap...This is how he seduces me --- with food and drink --- with tastes and tasting." Seduction is the linchpin of all the relationships in SHEET MUSIC.

Shattered emotionally and professionally by this short-lived coupling, Justine returns to the U.S., accepting an assignment to write a biography of the mysterious, exceptionally talented composer, Sophie DeLyon. A Svengali figure, DeLyon has endowed an institution where only the brightest talents become her devoted --- nearly obsessive, definitely possessive --- prodigees. DeLyon captivates her students --- male and female, young and old --- and commands (maybe demands) a questionable loyalty from all. She beguiles with the promise of eternal fame and unequalled talent. She appears well loved by all, but when she suddenly disappears without a trace, her distraught family, students and faculty all become suspect. Someone is not telling the truth, but all seem at a convincing loss.

Austen Bell is one of DeLyon's grieving former students and, coincidentally, Justine's ex from an earlier time. A cello player, he handles his instrument like a lover and his lovers with the same passion as his music. Another of Rose's authorial strengths: effective and telling flashbacks to their steamy relationship seamlessly woven into the present-day story. "Music always set the tone of our lovemaking. Romantic with Chopin, we were violent with Stravinsky, and reverential with Beethoven. We translated sound to touch, to physical rhythm."

Justine and Austen rekindle their attraction just as the mystery heats up. Though seduction of all varieties drives the plot of this erotic thriller, it is Justine's coming to terms with her loss and her power that completes the tale. As always, M.J. Rose renders hot-blooded characters with great dimension in SHEET MUSIC.

--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

I've loved all of M J Rose's books, and this one is truly her best. I sat up until all hours reading because I couldn't put it down--but I didn't want it to end, either. A smart and seductive mystery swirled around music, food, the passion of lovers, and the love between mother and daughter. Exactly what I want a book to be--literary and page-turning.

Journalist Justine Pagett escapes scandal, and returns to the US, where it is her assignment to write about composer Sophie DeLyon. But she receives threats warning her off, Sophie disappears and Justine learns of her own mother's secret. Compelling, this is a beautiful book, as much about food as it is of music. (A+)

Sheet Music-A Real Page Turner

After a scandal stemming from a story she wrote threatened her reputation as a journalist, the chance to interview Sophie DeLyon, a famous composer who founded a prestigious school of music, is a chance for professional salvation for Justine. Justine is unprepared, however, for how returning to New York for the interview meant she had to confront her relationship with her family, her unreconciled grief over her mother's death, and her fear of being hurt by love as her mother had been. Then DeLyon disappears, upsetting the world of the school and creating a crisis for Justine herself, not just at the professional level but a personal one as well.

M. J. Rose's writing is beautiful, compelling, and profoundly sensual-not simply in the sexual sense, but in the sense that all of the senses are savored. Taste and hearing are particularly central to the narrative, as food and music are important elements in Justine's relationship with others. Justine's experiences of the senses-feeling the vibrations of the cello, the taste of a slice of orange, the sound of a flute playing-are all deeply embedded in memories, emotions, and her personal demons.

Part mystery, part romance, and part a story of psychological discovery, Sheet Music is a suspenseful, absorbing novel, one I found difficult to put down. I would definitely recommend it.