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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Webcam venuses, August 29, 2006
"The Venus Fix" is a schizophrenic novel, a multi-strand thriller with erotic overtones.
At its center is sex counselor Dr. Morgan Snow. While her boyfriend, New York police detective Noah Jordain, is investigating the murder of an online performer, who died in agony during one of her shows, she's treating patients who may have a connection to the case. One is a mystery man who needs therapy for his addiction to Internet webcam shows, while the other is a group of teens from the same school.
Rose has said in interviews that she wanted the novel to reflect accurately the trauma caused by Internet sex addiction, and she has done so effectively, showing the lure of graphic images on the part of the men, and trauma such behavior inflicts on the women in their lives, and the girls who feel pressured to imitate the looks and behavior of porn stars.
But depicting behavior is not the same thing as telling a story. While the patients struggle with their obsessions and the murders of the sex performers follow the thriller template, the far more compelling story lies with Snow's personal life. Morgan and Noah, each with enough emotional baggage to fill a 747, feel their way toward a hopeful greater intimacy, which is threatened when Morgan's ex-husband returns, wanting to make things right with her. Morgan also has a problem with her daughter, who at 13 is acting in a Broadway play and has the potential of making a career out of acting. To Morgan, who saw her actress-mother self-destruct, this is unacceptable.
It is Morgan Snow's struggles to find her place in a relationship, to retain a connection with her daughter and her need to protect herself from her patients' traumas that give "The Venus Fix" its kick.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the year's best thrillers, August 5, 2006
An erotic thriller isn't the kind of book you'd expect to find on most guys' reading lists. But most novels of this type aren't as good, and as universal, as those written by M.J. Rose. Any reader, man or woman, who enjoys a sexy, suspenseful read would be advised to pick up one of her books.
Rose's latest, "The Venus Fix," features the return of sex therapist Morgan Snow, a single mom and top-notch professional in her field. In a wonderfully-crafted plot, Snow is counseling a group of teenagers who are addicted to live Internet sex shows. When someone starts killing off the performers, while the boys watch, Snow is drawn into the investigation.
The plot of "The Venus Fix" is fresh and intriguing, but it is the characters that push this thriller to such a high level. The relationships that fill it -- mother-daughter, doctor-patient, girlfriend-boyfriend -- are so well-developed and so real that the story takes on considerable power and poignancy.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not her best, November 14, 2007
Someone is killing webcam girls, someone very angry who wants to hurt someone close. Who could be doing it? That answer eludes Detective Noah Jordain, of the NYPD Special Victims Unit, but he is prepared to find out. On the other hand, Morgan Snow, sex psychologist at the Butterfield Institute, has several possible suspects. One of her clients is a very successful and well-known man -- so well-known that he attends the clinic under a pseudonym, for fear of being discovered. He is addicted to webcam pornography and feels a conflicted combination of guilt and thrill for hiding it from his wife. Morgan is also working with a group of teenagers with the same problem, webcam addiction. Are any of these people involved, or is someone close to them committing those crimes? If so, why? There are some twists throughout the novel.
M.J. Rose is one of my favorite suspense novelists. Her erotic-slash-psychological thrillers are delectable and enthralling. Her descriptions are sensual and literary. Her first novel, Lip Service, is a favorite of mine. I have read all of her books with the exception of The Reincarnationist (still on my TBR pile). The Dr. Morgan Snow novels are wonderful. Then why am I giving The Venus Fix two stars, you ask? I thought it was boring. I also didn't like the format in which it was written. There is too much head-hopping going on. Almost every chapter features a new point of view. Morgan, a fascinating and complex heroine, gets lost in the middle of all the isolated scenes/chapters. It made her first-person narrative seem absurd in the middle of so much third-person hopping. I give it two stars because I enjoyed her scenes with Noah and her difficulty accepting her teen daughter's passion for acting and how her daughter's ambition reminds her of her mother, a former child actor who self-destructed once her career was over. If not for that, I would have given it one star. Perhaps M.J. Rose is no longer into this series, which may explain why she hasn't written one in over a year. The first novel in the series, The Halo Effect, is the best one (so far). As said earlier, I admire this author, but that doesn't stop me from admitting that The Venus Fix is kind of a stinker.
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