In Fidelity

M.J. Rose

Not a book I would have picked up on my own, this was a free advanced readers copy. After spending several days with both Margaret Laurence and Amy Tan, Ms. Rose's writing abilities left me wanting. MJ Rose gained much attention several years back with her self-published book "Lip Service" which she succesfully marketed over the net. In "In Fidelity", she gives us the story of Jordan, a psychotherapist who watched her father get murdered, when she was younger, by her much older boyfriend, Dan. It's something she's never quite gotten over. Now, he's out of jail and she thinks he's following her. Add to that Robert, her cheating husband from whom she's separated but still wants, a rebelious teenage daughter who's love-struck and deep into Zen, and an over-sexed female patient she's psychoanalizing who serves as Jordan's foil, and you have a novel that wants to do so much but succeeds at hardly anything. There's even some phone sex thrown in for good measure. It's a mediocre book from a mediocre talent. The only thing that saved this book is that it's a beach read and I happened to be on a beach while reading it.