9780062324344
Play Sample

Guy in Real Life audiobook

  • By: Steve Brezenoff
  • Narrator: MacLeod Andrews
  • Length: 9 hours 33 minutes
  • Publisher: Balzer + Bray
  • Publish date: May 27, 2014
  • Language: English
  • (3606 ratings)
(3606 ratings)
33% Cheaper than Audible
Get for $0.00
  • $9.99 per book vs $14.95 at Audible
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Listen at up to 4.5x speed
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Fall asleep to your favorite books
    Set a sleep timer while you listen
  • Unlimited listening to our Classics.
    Listen to thousands of classics for no extra cost. Ever
Loading ...
Regular Price: 27.99 USD

Guy in Real Life Audiobook Summary

From the acclaimed author of Brooklyn, Burning comes Guy in Real Life, an achingly real and profoundly moving love story about two teens that National Book Award-finalist Sara Zarr has called “wholly original and instantly classic.”

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 Bjork 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 the roles we all play–at school, at home, online, and with our friends–and the one person who might be able to show us who we are underneath it all.

Other Top Audiobooks

Guy in Real Life Audiobook Narrator

MacLeod Andrews is the narrator of Guy in Real Life audiobook that was written by Steve Brezenoff

Steve Brezenoff is the author of the young adult novels The Absolute Value of -1, which won the IPPY Gold Medal for young adult fiction, and Brooklyn, Burning, which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book, was a Best Fiction for Young Adults selection by the American Library Association, and won the ForeWord Book of the Year Gold Medal for young adult fiction. Born on Long Island, Steve now lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Beth, and their son and daughter, Sam and Etta. His main is a Blood Elf monk, but he's been known to run a Night Elf priest from time to time.

About the Author(s) of Guy in Real Life

Steve Brezenoff is the author of Guy in Real Life

Guy in Real Life Full Details

Narrator MacLeod Andrews
Length 9 hours 33 minutes
Author Steve Brezenoff
Publisher Balzer + Bray
Release date May 27, 2014
ISBN 9780062324344

Additional info

The publisher of the Guy in Real Life is Balzer + Bray. The imprint is Balzer + Bray. It is supplied by Balzer + Bray. The ISBN-13 is 9780062324344.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Erin

March 02, 2014

I haven't loved a book this much since I read Eleanor & Park. Such authentic characters, and a really sweet falling-in-love story. I'm not into gaming stuff, but actually really enjoyed that (smallish) aspect of the story - but I adore real-life Lesh and Lana so much.

Jessica

November 14, 2014

1) This is about 75 times more nerdy than you think its going to be.2) I found the prose and pacing to be occasionally lacking.3) This is the first YA romance I've read in ages that actually *felt* like my own teen romances - all, "argh, why did I say that in the cafeteria and now he/she's being weird" and the awkward meeting of parents and anxiety over whether your boyfriend likes you or if he just likes the way you look/sex/the idea of you.4) Ultimately, this book went a lot of interesting places - especially about masculinity and gender in general - but I wish it had gotten there faster.

b.andherbooks

June 03, 2015

Actual rating 3.5 stars.Svetlana should live in another era. She loves embroidery, D&D, drawing, reading, and opera. She is the Dungeon Master of her High School's table top game club (barely holding onto its official status with five members) and sleeps in a tower (ok, really the attic of her house).Lesh is a metal-head who gets sucked into playing a MMO game online after he is grounded for coming home drunk. This is the incident where he actually runs into Svetlana, knocking her off her bicycle and ruining her notebook of D&D maps and characters. After apologizing and becoming her lunch buddy, they start to fall for each other despite each of their hesitations and their respective groups negative attitudes. But, will Svetlana find out Lesh is impersonating her online in his MMO and get grossed out? Can people from two different castes really date?Super cute and fun, but definitely not the emotional "gut-punch" that the description of this book promised. That was fine with me, but let's not over-sell here people. I really thought Brezenoff had a wonderful handle on the different high school groups he explores, and I love that Lesh wasn't already a hard-core gamer and actually kind of fell into being one due to circumstances. I also loved finding out the "Guy in Real Life" is actually a really horrible internet etiquette failure (G.I.R.L.). Ha. Never knew.

Alyssa

September 12, 2016

This novel ended up completely surprising me. Before I started reading it, I assumed it would be your typical cheesy YA novel. However, Guy in Real Life definitely is not typical. I laughed more than I thought I would, and I genuinely hurt for the characters at times. I've never read a book in which some of the actual characters are characters in a video game, but I found myself wishing a couple times that more authors would follow in Brezenoff's footsteps and incorporate fictional characters into the novel. While Guy in Real Life is not one of my favorites, it is definitely a book I would recommend to a friend.

Anne Marie

December 22, 2014

I'm glad I stuck with this book. I learned a lot about gaming, on line and table role play -D and D. The characters are very real and I found myself connecting to both Lesh and Svetlana. It is well written with beautiful descriptions in just the right amounts. It seems to be written with high schoolers in mind but would be fine for many grade 8s.

E.K.

August 23, 2015

So GIRL came out last year, and I didn't read it because...I don't even know. I mean, I don't read a lot of contemp. For some reason (probably surgery and lack of time spent in the book store), I never got around to it. Then, when I was leaving Chapters, I bought the last hardcover just before the trade came out. I took it with me to The Woods in June, and...Well, The Woods doesn't have wifi, as you know. I got about three chapters in, and thought to myself "I need to stop reading this until I am somewhere where I can livetweet it", and then I thought "No way in hell am I stopping this book", and then I read the whole thing, and drove up to the top of the hill IN THE DARK to go on Twitter and yell at Steve for having written something THAT WAS SO GOOD.GIRL has two protagonists: Lesh, a teen-age dirtbag, and Svetlana, who has kind of figured herself out ahead of schedule, and whose family isn't really set up for that. Lesh meets Svet, and becomes...obsessed with her? I guess? It's not quite an obsession. Fascination, maybe. He's fascinated by her.He's also grounded for two weeks, and all he can do is play the in-universe version of World of Warcraft. His (really, really terrible) best friend sets him up as an orc, but the ugliness and violence turns Lesh off, so he makes his own avatar: an elf healer who looks rather like Svet.As Lesh goes further into the game and further into his real life, things become messy and complicated and kind of terrifying, and ALSO WONDERFUL, and more than one time I yelled "YOU ARE ON A LOCAL SERVER, YOU DUMBASS!".I basically read YA books for a LIVING, and I have never read anyone who writes teens as real as Steve does. Lesh's self realization is AMAZING (not to mention timely: this came out just as GamerGate really hit mainstream, and watching Lesh be ACTIVELY REPULSED by aspects of the gaming world gave me, like, HOPE FOR HUMANITY), and Svet's entire character arc rang so true with me that alternated between laughing and crying for much of her narration (their families, I can't even. Perfection. Everything about this book is just too good).Also, when Lesh is playing the game, it's written like the game. It was awesome.I love this book with the sort of power I rarely feel for contemporary. I don't know if I've EVER love a contemporary book this much. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Emily

August 19, 2014

This book brought me dangerously close to downloading WoW again. Too close. ok there's manic pixie dream girl and then there's manic pixie dream girl who is a dnd DM and whose name is svetlana. come on brezenoff, we get it.and yet I do. I'm in love with this book and maybe it's because I've gotten addicted to skyrim lately (twenty four hours sans play though at this moment) and really miss world of Warcraft but OMG I effing love this book.confused sexual identity aside this is a great way to approach the topic in a subtle, smaller way. what was off to me is that having played mmos and rolled characters of the opposite sex before without even questioning it it was odd to have lesh care so much about it. ok yes he is sixteen and maybe he was on a pvp server but really come on. and the whole thing with stebbins showing up at the juice shop. come on. should have been forced to tell her on his own not through some random coincidence that the guy he meets in game lives in the same town and finds him irl. nope. not buying it. and the dwindling friendship w Greg wasn't totally well played out either

Sarah

June 06, 2014

This book is great! Over the years, it seems that many teens books have included insta-love, couples meant to be together, etc. This is one of those lovely stories that deals with the before of a relationship; the crush stage when two people are getting to know each other and figuring out themselves too. The story also deals with gender roles in a way that I found unique. The fact that Lesh is a metal head and Lana is a dungeon master can certainly be a way to get teens to try this book, but it's so not what it's about. Librarians, give this to teens who like gaming, who like music, who like a romantic story, and who like well written, thought provoking stories.

High Plains

June 17, 2016

Allow me a moment to gush...This is precisely the sappy young adult, boy meets girl (boy knocks girl off bike) romance I love. Here you get the story from both characters point of view, and in this case, their RPG persona's view as well. It's sweet and fun, and reminds me of being a slightly odd girl with a crush on a slightly odd boy. If you enjoyed Fan Girl, by Rainbow Rowell, you will most assuredly adore Guy in Real Life. Thumbs up for the audio version, too! The narration is excellent.Bethany

Jennifer

May 02, 2019

I was on the search for a Lit-RPG book for my reading challenge. (That's a thing?) The only book I could find that I was remotely interested in was Ready Player One and I had already read that book. I even checked out a 770-page monster called Otherland (1st book in a series - oh, no...), but happily, I found this awesome YA book instead. This is probably not one of my absolute favorites books of all time, but it is a sweet and definitely awkward love story between two kids that shouldn't be a couple but couldn't help but fall in love. I didn't expect much from this book but ended up really enjoying it.Content: minor language and references to drinking, drugs, and sex, but nothing is explicit and I appreciated that.

Hollowspine

August 15, 2014

After having read Brooklyn, Burning by this author and really enjoying not only the story, but the author's decision to keep the genders of the characters unwritten, I was quick to put my name on the list to get this book from the library. And I was not disappointed.This time our main characters do have gender roles assigned to them, but that doesn't mean they have to play them. Brezenoff again shows that gender is always in a bit of a flux state. The story revolves around two very different people, both on the fringes of high school life. Svetlana is a table-top RPGer, in fact she's a Dungeon Master. She creates and runs elaborate scenarios in fantasy worlds for her small group of friends. However, there's trouble in paradise. Membership is dropping and without at five people the club will be disbanded. Lesh is a metal-head. His friends are all black-clad smokers and delinquents, or as Svetlana's group might call them, miscreants. They go to shows, get high and have one word nicknames like Cheese and Jelly. Lesh finds himself drifting away from his best friend, Greg, and is unmoored from his regular group.The two meet in the worst possible way, head on collision. But, things change as they both seek an escape from their normal surroundings and find it in each other's company during school lunch. While Svet deals with the attentions of more than one misunderstanding gamer-geek, Lesh has his own problems with mistaken identities. He's started playing an MMO...and his character is a beautiful elvish woman. The MMO sections were hilarious. Made me remember those days so long ago when my family first got the Internet. Ah, AOL and it's many chat rooms. For some reason I often came off as a dude, usually older, which wasn't always a assumption I'd correct.Having been a table-top gamer back in high school myself, those sections were pretty realistic. Though Svet's style of DMing made me kinda shake my head, I probably wouldn't last gaming with her either. Not to mention the hilarity and realism of the LARPing section, which I'm embarrassed to admit I witnessed first hand a couple times.Which leads to the fact that it's awesome that Brezenoff used the Twin Cities as his background in the story. It added to the story for me since I'm from the area, went to the U. Though I've never been to the Epic - I always went to smaller shows at the Triple Rock or the former Quest.I'd recommend this book to anyone, not just gamers. Readers of Eleanor & Park, this would be right up your street.

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

footer-waves