Fiction Tuesday-Friend Me

“You’re afraid you are becoming unfaithful, aren’t you?” 

Scott and Rachel’s marriage is on the brink of disaster. Scott, a businessman with a high-pressure job, just wants Rachel to understand him and accept his flaws. Rachel is a lonely housewife, desperate for attention and friendship. So she decides to create a virtual friend online, unaware that Scott is doing the exact same thing. But neither realizes that there’s a much larger problem looming. . . . 

Behind both of their online creations is Melissa, a woman who is brilliant— and totally insane. Masquerading as both friend and lover, Melissa programmed a search parameter into the Virtual Friend Me software to find her perfect man, but along the way she forgot to specify his marriage status. And Scott is her ideal match. Now Melissa is determined to have it all—Scott, his family, and Rachel’s life. 

As Melissa grows bolder and her online manipulations transition into the real world, Scott and Rachel figure out they are being played. Now it’s a race against time as Scott and Rachel fight to save their marriage, and their lives, before it’s too late.

John Faubion’s debut novel speaks to the heart of relationships, of the depths of marriage and the reality of what betrayal and unfaithfulness looks like to people of faith.

Not something we might expect from a former missionary unless we knew that missionary turned software developer.

You just knew a book like Friend Me had to come sooner or later in today’s social media world. Virtual reality, while around for a while, melds dangerously with physical reality in this story. When loneliness and disappointment lead Rachel Douglas to experiment with a new website to re-create a lost friendship with a virtual online avatar, neither she nor her husband realize they are being played. Rachel’s husband, Scott, is curious about his wife’s activities, and checks out the site. Stress at work may be part of the blame, but giving in to temptation and a lack of respect and trust in the people around him—a heart of sin—is what leads him to create a virtual playmate. What is unfaithfulness? Faubion explores the issue in this book that’s sure to generate a lot of good discussion.

Told from three viewpoints, the two protagonists, Scott and Rachel, and the antagonist who’s the programmer, the reader is never in the dark about the depths to which each of them has fallen. Their deepest desires, their faults and their faith are all exposed as they strive for what they want.-Lisa

This book almost reminds me of a movie I watched years ago about a psychopath woman who fell in love with a man and tried to get his life.

I really loved this book because today, women and men both fall prey to the secretive online relationships that ruin marriages. I was glad to see that an author FINALLY wrote a novel about this situation and how it can definitely cause turmoil in relationships. -Jennifer