Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

In Love With You

Rate this book
He's a surfer with a dangerous past. She's a writer fresh out of ideas. And they both know you're reading their story. The fourth wall is about to come down...

Ryder
Do you want to know a secret? I can feel you here, reading this blurb, the same way I can feel you turning the pages of this book.
And I like it, reader. I like it a little too much.
I’m not sure how or why you’ve appeared in my world but having you close is a comfort when my life has become all too un comfortable.
You’re right beside me as I care for my sick mother. You let me express my fears about the secrets my little sister is keeping. Most of all, you stick with me even when the tantalizing romance writer decides a plaid-wearing, cold-water-surfing, part-time-bartending guy like me would make the perfect research subject for her next novel.
But the lines between what is research and what is honest connection become blurred all too quickly. I find myself stuck between you and Luna, placing the three of us in the most mind-bending love triangle you've ever read about. Are you here for it the way I am?

Luna
Don’t you think it’s a little bit unfair, reader, that you expect me to write a short summary about my own personal story when you’ve already elbowed your way into it, seeing everything as it happens?
Well, fine. But you’re not getting a full summary. You’re getting a hook, so here it goes…
I don’t know if other writers talk to their readers strictly in their head, but I do. It helps me filter out what around me is book-worthy or not. And let me tell you, reader, the moment I slam into that tall, mystery of a man in the surf, I know he is book boyfriend material. He is the answer to every problem I have with my writing career at the moment.
But what I don’t expect is for him to be real-world boyfriend material.
Oh, reader, are you ready to finally watch your favorite romance author get caught up in a love story of her own?

393 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 7, 2023

200 people are currently reading
2280 people want to read

About the author

Faye Darling

3 books21 followers

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
36 (12%)
4 stars
44 (15%)
3 stars
83 (29%)
2 stars
50 (17%)
1 star
72 (25%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
Profile Image for anna near.
210 reviews9 followers
July 30, 2023
what the fuck ???? how did i just get cheated on and dumped by a fictional guy i didnt even like. the audacity ryder has is outrageous. i hate men.

do. not. read.
Profile Image for Brooke Coy.
143 reviews
June 21, 2023
An ugly male character that I have no interest in is in love with me...unprovoked? But then he strings me along while he's falling in love with another girl? Yeah I really don't need to read a book where I get cheated on and dumped - like I would rather experience it firsthand than read this book ever again
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Rochelli.
81 reviews
October 7, 2024
Okay lots and lots of feelings about this book.

I really did feel misled by the marketing. I feel like if youre going to market the book that way then at least give the reader who youre using as a focal point to sell the book, a much happier ending than the one we got. Yes the characters were happy but i definitely was not.

The writing was nice, yes and so was the romance between luna and ryder. The thing is, it wouldve been a thousand times better without the insertion of the reader into it when the reader was just going to be pushed aside in the end.

So yeah 2 stars.
Profile Image for Kennedy Felts .
2 reviews
December 25, 2023
Bruh this book made me so sad. I can’t even have a fake man’s cuz apparently he’ll leave me too. It would’ve been so much better if this was a romance book between Ryder and Luna.. like why did I have to be involved.
Ryder in the beginning had me giggling and kicking my feet only to then fall in love with the other character like I wasn’t right there..?
It’s being advertised as a book where the MMC falls in love with the reader but not advertising that the MMC is going to string you along and rip your heart out in the end when he dumps you for the other girl. Talking bout “I haven’t thought about you much” and “I loved you but I don’t just love this girl.. id do anything for her”
Heart breaking. Made me feel pathetic lol
Profile Image for PastaSauceVampire.
38 reviews1 follower
September 7, 2023
I just don't know. What the fuck made the author think that having a fictional character cheat on the reader would be an amazing wonderful thing? Like what kind of stupid do you have to be to do that?? All the negative reviews just wanted one thing- for the MMC to fall in love with THE READER and get a happy ending. Like that's what we thought it's going to be. You even marketed it that way. Did this author just really write about one of the most unique, most requested, thought about book plots and fucking ruin it in the end??? YES.
Profile Image for Jennifer.
Author 1 book11 followers
May 31, 2025
I cannot truly express what I read. I am not sure what I was expecting and yet here we are.

My heart at some point began to ache for a man who did not exist. More so than my normal book boyfriends. I rode the line if is this creepy or is it just someone who has a fantasy.

And then the author. She was there talking to me. Asking me about her life. I had never experienced anything like this.

Heads up there is a lot of parent death and mention of domestic abuse

I’m not sure if I should be upset that I was strung along, made to fall in love, have intimate moments and then be a cuck and dumped for the other woman in the end. I am not sure If I will recover anytime soon lol.

The only reason for 4 stars is I felt a little misled, I was made to feel like the mmc would fall in love with me. So I was expecting a HEA with me lol and also I felt like his moms death at the end was super rushed.

Book 2 looks cool though.
Profile Image for Lauren Manning.
108 reviews9 followers
July 17, 2023
I was under the impression that the fictional man was supposed to fall in love with me. I didn’t expect to get fictionally cheated on and be casted to the side like yesterday's trash by the end of the book not even the end. The middle really.
It was deeply miss marketed and honestly, deserves to be thrown in a dumpster 🤷🏼‍♀️ thankfully it’s free with kindle unlimited so I didn’t pay a cent for this trash.
1 review
July 30, 2023
WHAT THE FUCK!! DID I READ!! He cheated on me! The audacity of this man. Don’t read.
10 reviews
September 11, 2023
This is totally b*****t. I'm sorry, But this is bad advertising. Fall in love with reader my a**. Why adding the reader then? Started it because i thought it was an interesting writing experiment. It was the first book i heard doing something like that. But luna is annoying as hell and the ending too.
And the author should have really put some warning at the start because if you have a dear one with cancer or that is really ill, you will do a cold shower and not be ready for it. Saying that the mother is ill isn't enough.
Profile Image for Alex.
49 reviews1 follower
October 2, 2023
I almost DNFed this many many times. I loved the idea of the book character to fall in love with the reader, but the way it was executed made me feel violated. Definitely not a book for me. Didn't want to judge before finishing it.
Profile Image for Heather.
517 reviews
dnf
September 6, 2023
DNF @ 54% Maybe if this hadn’t been marketed as a ‘MMC falls in love with the reader’ I would have liked it because the actual writing is nice. However it was marketed as a romance where the MMC falls in love with the reader so I expected that to be the story line not him falling in love with the reader then getting together with this other girl who is apparently the writer of the book being read. So basically I got cheated on by a fictional boyfriend and have to watch it all go down. No thanks.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Dan.
5 reviews2 followers
January 3, 2024
Si pudiera ponerle 0 estrellas, lo haría. Libro basura que te venden como una cosa pero resulta en otra totalmente distinta. No se que carajo estaba pensando la autora cuando escribió esto y pensó que era una buena idea. Literal este libro me hizo sentir patética. No, gracias. No leo para que también me humillen en la ficción.
Profile Image for Ⓢ Ⓨ.
168 reviews23 followers
June 27, 2023
The first page had me really intrigued. Unfortunately, that was as good as it got for me.
I picked it up, I put it down. It just didn’t keep me engrossed and I read three other books in the middle of reading this one.
Being in love with me was a bit unnecessary- it probably would’ve been just as good to skip all that and just tell the story of Ryder and Luna.
3.5*. It was just ok 😕
Profile Image for izzy 📚.
201 reviews3 followers
June 11, 2023
2.5 stars rounded up

Thank you to the author for the opportunity to read the ARC of this. I was really excited by the concept of this book but found it a bit disturbing in places. I enjoyed the moments between Ryder and the other characters more than the breaking of the 4th wall moments. I would LOVE to read Steph and Nick’s book as I don’t think there is any connection between the reader and characters. It was a really good idea but in the end the relationships between the characters was written better and more pleasant to read.
Profile Image for Anna Goodwin.
545 reviews1 follower
June 20, 2023
I went into this knowing it’d be different but not like this.
The writing was good I just didn’t like parts and the other mc was annoying and I feel like the premise lied to me that the mmc falls for me? But halfway through he falls for the author? And the ending felt very rushed to me.
1/5⭐️
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Courtney Morano.
28 reviews1 follower
December 1, 2024
So I was love bombed, cheated on, and dumped in the matter of 371 pages 🫠
Profile Image for Nancy.
24 reviews
June 19, 2023
TL;DR 2.5/5 stars as a romance novel, 10/10 emotional damage. The gimmicky premise is fun for a few chapters (and, I admit, makes for very good marketing) but then quickly runs its course, making the rest of the book not a very pleasant read for those of us not particularly interested in being literarily cucked.

This is an odd book. The premise is obviously intriguing in a lot of ways, and I was drawn in, like most of you reading this, by the concept of a character falling in love with the reader. But I think this book shows exactly why this idea isn't explored more by other authors.

I've never been possessive of my book boyfriends. I, like many of you fellow readers in this genre, have always been content watching voyeuristically as two characters overcome their differences and fall in love, enjoying the rollercoaster of their relationship. However, it's a different story when the male lead literally breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge your presence, the sensation of you turning his pages, and tell you sincerely that he is in love with you. Pro : You will fall in love with the MMC, so props to the author for that. Con : You will regret this wholeheartedly.

Of course, there's no world in which a relationship between a fictional character and his reader could end happily, especially in a romance novel, where he has his own in-world love interest. But this is exactly why the decision to include this fourth wall-breaking side plot is baffling to me! If the plan all along was to have these two fictional characters fall in love and get together in this very stereotypical way, why involve the reader at all? It would have been a much better experience to just read about Ryder and Luna, two unlikely people falling in love with each other. Instead, the author drags us (the reader) into the story as an unwilling participant in a lopsided, forced love triangle where the only thing we can do is keep reading and watch as Ryder, who has already professed his love to us, fall hard for someone else. The book rubs it in our faces - we watch as he kisses her, fucks her, and develops real feelings for her, all described to us in lurid detail, tinged with guilt. Funnily enough, it reminds me of that part in Eclipse where Edward is forced to sit in a tent, gritting his teeth, hearing all of Jacob's racy and romantic thoughts about Bella as he holds her body in the sleeping bag. Only this time, it's us in the tent, forced to watch as .

Maybe it's ridiculous to feel a little hurt by a fictional character choosing someone else over you, but every time I feel a bit dumb for feeling this way, I'm reminded that the author deliberately cultivates these feelings throughout the book - she has Ryder profess his feelings to us (the reader), create intimate moments and "dates" with us, express his confusion and guilt about his relationship with Luna, and hell, even . In other words, she deliberately frames this as some sort of cheating-adjacent situation, and Ryder quickly starts to feel like a (very) long-distance boyfriend who justifies his unfaithfulness by saying that he has physical needs and, well, she was there (with her "perfect hourglass" body") and you weren't. It starts to feel a little like emotional manipulation, like the author is deliberately getting us invested by introducing a love interest that is somehow irrevocably in love with us, then yanking him away to keep us engaged through morbid curiosity alone.

That being said, if you can ignore all of that, the actual love story of Ryder and Luna is decently written - the author has a knack for romantic imagery and dialogue and the Pacific Northwest setting is pretty refreshing, though I do think that all the fourth wall breaking takes a lot of time away from fleshing out these characters even more. Ryder is a standard male love interest, a muscular surfer and family man with a heart of gold and a somewhat dark past, and Luna is a standard sassy female lead, a successful romance novelist who travels the world collecting "research" for her novels but spends most of her time telling men not to mansplain to her or ogle her perfectly shaped ass. Their relationship had nice moments of sweetness but the ending was extremely rushed with zero stakes The two of them getting together at the end didn't feel totally believable, since Ryder's "relationship" with the reader was always a looming cloud over his relationship with Luna, . Another reason I'm not a fan of love triangles in general - life and its circumstances should offer enough conflict to a relationship without having another arbitrary person physically stand in the way for purely dramatic effect.

Feeling invested in the main couple just seems like a basic requirement to enjoy a romance novel. And maybe this is just me, but if I'm one end of a love triangle, I'm gonna have a pretty hard time rooting for the couple on the other end! So, I can only recommend this book if you have never had the misfortune of being cheated on in real life, and want to know first-hand what that feels like. Or if you're some kind of literary masochist and want to experience being rejected over and over again - not just by run-of-the-mill assholes in real life - but also by beloved fictional characters. Truly the sensation of heartbreak over 400 long pages. For those of us who do not have the burning desire to experience being the sad, rejected part of a love triangle, this is probably not the right book.
Profile Image for Allison Markus.
28 reviews1 follower
September 28, 2023
If you see this and you know me… no you don’t.

Sounded like a fun little book. I guess it’s fun if you want to have a fictional character be in love with “you” and then have said fictional character cheat on you every chance he gets and have him say that he thinks you like it when he cheats because he can “feel you” and your emotions. Basically it feels like the MMC thinks the reader is into voyeurism.

I mean I guess it’s an interesting concept but it was marketed all over tik tok as the MMC falling in love with you - the reader - which in turn had me believing that there wasn’t particularly going to be a happily ever after because he couldn’t actually be with the reader. I guess I just wasn’t expecting the direction the author actually took it. Interesting concept… weird book…
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Kyleah.
218 reviews2 followers
July 16, 2023
Okay, I have feelings about this.

This book is 100% misleading in the marketing. It is NOT a book where the MMC falls in love with you (the reader) and that’s the whole romance. This is about the MMC falling in the love with the reader in the very beginning of the book, but then falling in love with another woman in the end.

If this book was marketed differently, it very well could be 4 stars, but alas, the marketing was just so wildly different from what we got.

That being said - writing style is very good & the spice is top tier & had me blushing like Luna in some parts!

I will be reading the second book when it comes out, as it sounds like it’ll be marketed as a true romance with Steph & Nick without the inclusion of the reader!
2 reviews
January 3, 2024
I read all of this in one seating for one reason only.
Closure.
My emotions were all over the place, I fall in love easily… very easily and I obviously fell in love with Ryder.
To say the least i felt betrayed, used and humiliated.
I needed to hear his say goodbye.
Deleted this from my library exactly after the last page.
Profile Image for Jas.
51 reviews
November 2, 2023
no because it started SO GOOD. The idea of this book was GREAT and I loved it BUT AHH WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THIS MAN CHEAT ON ME MULTIPLE TIMES AND SHIT AND THEN EXPECT ME TO ROOT FOR HIM AND THIS GIRLY?!! Like I couldn’t enjoy this book at all anymore from the half AH
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Helen.
2 reviews2 followers
July 13, 2023
Loved the premise of it, of him know you are there and falling for you, but ends up breaking your heart for the girl in the book....i hated being broken up with by my fictional men now....lol
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for alexa.
23 reviews3 followers
September 17, 2023
this whole book felt like a fever dream, absolutely wild
Profile Image for Kate.
2 reviews
December 31, 2023
I can't believe I got cheated by a fictional guy.
Profile Image for Heather (life_is_booked).
209 reviews4 followers
June 9, 2023
"I want you to find a way to slip into the book you're reading. Step onto the page, then through it and into my world."

🌊 MMC Falls in Love w/ Reader
🌊 FMC is a Writer
🌊 Dual POV
🌊 Surfing/Camping
🌊 Protective MMC
🌊 Only One Tent
🌊 Small Beach Town (PNW)

This was such a different reading experience, and I absolutely loved every second of it!! You really feel like you are right there with Ryder and Luna, experiencing everything ~ the laughs, the tears, the excitement, the vulnerability, the love!

Ryder has such a complicated past; he puts on such a badass front but is such a loving/kind person at heart. Luna is strong woman, with all her walls up ~ she is bound and determined not to let anyone inside.

Luna has escaped to the coast of the PNW to try to find some encouragement to write her next book ~ one morning surfing she drops in on Ryder, literally! Ryder has a lot going on in his life and doesn't need Luna to add to list of things he has to worry about.

Luna likes to talk to her reader as she is preparing/writing her book, she is comforted by her reader, she asks for help/signs to ensure she is making the right decisions. Ryder is falling in love with the reader, he can feel the readers presence, the reader is his safety net, but can you truly love someone who is not there?!

The more they get to know each other, the more they realize just how much of their past and present they have in common. Luna stays by Ryder's side and comforts him through caring for his sick mother, even if it does bring up hard memories for her.

Really looking forward to Steph and Nick's story ~ it's going to be so good!!
Profile Image for Dalene.
1,435 reviews30 followers
September 12, 2023
You ever read a book and think wth did I just read? That was this book. Will I read the next in the series? Yes. But was I confused as all heck? Also yes.

Okay so the premise of this book is that Ryder lives in this small town when author Luna comes to town. She wants to write a book about a surfer and picks Ryder. Ryder is all down to get paid of it. But what he didn't expect was falling for her...and you. Yes you. As in the reader. This is where this book threw me for a loop. Ryder and Luna both talk to the reader. Not kidding. So while Ryder kisses Luna he thinks of his love of a woman he hasn't ever seen or spoken to, you the reader. Was it odd AF? Understatement. I would have rated this higher easily if not for that aspect. The story was great but the whole speaking to the reader was so odd for me. But will I read the next book to find out about Ryder's sister? You bet!

And if you are curious what I mean, here are some quotes that are spoken to the reader, you:
"OOF, your touch right now as you turned the page gave me a little thrill. Heart plummeting. Goosebumps rising on my arms. Shivers crawling over my scalp. Do you realize what you're doing to me?"

"I was beginning to think you wanted nothing to do with me. That you closed the book on me and left me to stumble around on my own."

See, told ya. Take that as you must, just know the romance between Luna and Ryder (when they aren't talking to the reader) was great. All the spice with them.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.