Audio Review : Guy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff

Posted by on August 30, 2014 1:25 am in 4 stars reads | 9 comments

guy in real lifeGuy in Real Life by Steve Brezenoff
Narrated by : MacLeod Andrews, Arielle DeLisle
Pages/Time : 400 pages / 9h33
Genre : YA, Contemporary
Stand alone
My Rating : 4/5

About the Book  :

It is Labor Day weekend in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and boy and girl collide on a dark street at two thirty in the morning: Lesh, who wears black, listens to metal, and plays MMOs; Svetlana, who embroiders her skirts, listens to Björk and Berlioz, and dungeon masters her own RPG. They should pick themselves up, continue on their way, and never talk to each other again.

But they don’t.

This is a story of two people who do not belong in each other’s lives, who find each other at a time when they desperately need someone who doesn’t belong in their lives. A story of those moments when we act like people we aren’t in order to figure out who we are. A story of the roles we all play-at school, at home, with our friends, and without our friends-and the one person who might show us what lies underneath it all.

My Thoughts :

When I finished reading Guy in Real Life, I immediately went on Goodreads to write a “review” that contained the following :

😀

Yup, that’s it! This book made me SO happy! It was such a fun and heartwarming read, yet it had some very real moments too. Both Lesh and Svetlana were great, complex, likable, just enough imperfect characters I had a great time following. Their relationship didn’t feel forced and I loved that even though they thought about each other a lot, it evolved naturally (despite Lesh’s weird, uhm, obsession with virtual Svetlana – but that’s a another big part of the story!)

One thing I can say for sure is that the narration was fantastic. I connected both with Arielle DeLisle and MacLoed Andrews’ voices. Steve Brezenoff wrote a great story and the audio version made it shine. Both were expressive and well suited to their roles, and so on point they actually got a few out loud laughs from me! In fact, I am thinking that some of these jokes probably worked better in audio. I liked it a lot!

The RPG and MMORPG (online gaming) elements are very present in the book but I felt the author explained them very simply, making it approachable for those who aren’t familiar with these. This being said, as an occasional player of both, I loved how the author used them. The game Lesh plays online is very clearly inspired by World of Warcraft and oh gosh did it bring me back to my years playing it! So many memories! It’s a bit of the same effect Ready Player One had, though in a whole different genre!

The book looks like – and read like – a lot of fun, but there were some very interesting themes through it. Lesh plays a girl online and it does catch up to him, and it raises very interesting questions. Relationships and friendships are also central themes, done in a cute way without over-the-top romance.

Well, I guess overall Guy in Real Life was a really nice surprise! I was entertained from start to finish, to the point where I would find a lot of time in my day to listen to the audio (a lot of cleaning up and cooking was done during these couple of weeks!) This was my first time reading Steve Brezenoff and certainly not the last!

9 Comments

  1. I’m not a gamer but my son and nephew are so I’ve heard enough of the lingo that I could follow this book. It sounds like a lot of fun!

    • Ha yup, that certainly gives you a good head start to get into this one!

  2. Huh, this sort of reminds me of the audio of Fangirl and I wonder if it would be similar. I’ll see if my library has an audio version – and now I want to listen to Fangirl again, haha!

    • I have read Fangirl, not listened, so that makes me really curious about the audio version! I think they are different enough in their styles, though they do share the “geeky” aspect. And though I had a great time with this one, I connected more, on a personal level, with Fangirl.
      I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts on it!

  3. I’m glad to hear the book and audio were so enjoyable! I think I have this one on audio and will have to move it up the queue. You know an audio is good when it has you doing more cleaning chores so you can get more listening in 🙂

    • Haha yes! I’ve been doing a better job of selecting my audiobooks recently and the Man has commented on how much quicker I got on my chores. No complaints 😛

  4. Sounds like an intriguing read!

  5. This sounds like a really interesting/good book and I am immediately off to Goodreads to check it out after here. I am pleased to hear you enjoyed it so much and could relate to it!

  6. I definitely want to read this book after your review. This just looks like my kind of book!

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