Steve Brezenoff

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 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 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.

Guy in Real Life

Paula Plaza Ponte 

Okay. Sloooooow start and a lot of gamer build up, that does all come together in the end, which made it worth reaching the end. I think there were many "puppies/darlings" the writer could have just killed that would have tightened the story. Felt like he was rehearsing a lot in the beginning, maybe. The story picked up for me on the 200th page and it felt like the writing picked up somewhere there too. Idk. All in all, there's a part of me that's happy I stuck with it. His comment on gender and love and admiration and growing up and just being awkward around all that is really interesting. Many of you will spot that and appreciate it, maybe. But there's also a part of me now, that's glad it is over so I can read my next book already.

"I just want grace. I want passion and heart and beauty and a sense of connection to the world." 

Yeah. I want that too.

Audrey Lord

I really hate how men write women, especially young women. But this story definitely has some redeeming qualities

b.andherbooks

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.

Elad Schulman

I just don't think this book was my kind of book. I'm not much of a gamer, so I didn't enjoy, or understand most of those chapters. The relationship between Lesh and Svetlana was 'meh' for me, and their wasn't much to the plot either.

Guy in Real Life

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