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    Tell Me It's Real
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    Tell Me It's Real
    Unavailable
    Tell Me It's Real
    Ebook462 pages7 hours

    Tell Me It's Real

    By TJ Klune

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Do you believe in love at first sight?

    Paul Auster doesn't. Paul doesn't believe in much at all. He’s thirty, slightly overweight, and his best features are his acerbic wit and the color commentary he provides as life passes him by. His closest friends are a two-legged dog named Wheels and a quasibipolar drag queen named Helena Handbasket. He works a dead-end job in a soul-sucking cubicle, and if his grandmother's homophobic parrot insults him one more time, Paul is going to wring its stupid neck.

    Enter Vince Taylor.

    Vince is everything Paul isn’t: sexy, confident, and dumber than the proverbial box of rocks. And for some reason, Vince pursues Paul relentlessly. Vince must be messing with him, because there is no way Vince could want someone like Paul.

    But when Paul hits Vince with his car—in a completely unintentional if-he-died-it'd-only-be-manslaughter kind of way—he's forced to see Vince in a whole new light. The only thing stopping Paul from believing in Vince is himself—and that is one obstacle Paul can’t quite seem to overcome. But when tragedy strikes Vince's family, Paul must put aside any notions he has about himself and stand next to the man who thinks he's perfect the way he is.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateFeb 15, 2013
    ISBN9781623803544
    Unavailable
    Tell Me It's Real
    Author

    TJ Klune

    TJ Klune is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, In the Lives of Puppets, the Green Creek series for adults, the Extraordinaries series for teens and more. Being queer himself, Klune believes it's important – now more than ever – to have accurate, positive queer representation in stories.

    Read more from Tj Klune

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    Reviews for Tell Me It's Real

    4/5

    67 ratings9 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Funniest book ever!
    • 3/5
      I loved Paul's silly voice. He is completely aware when he is being gossipy or bitchy and he doesn't care. He can be a bit annoying with his self-image issues.
      For some reason Paul Austin has very low self-esteem, so he doesn't believe when someone beautiful is interested in him. Well, other than to Freddie Prinze Junior him that is.

      Paul is more fortunate than a lot of other characters I've read. Even though he constantly refuses to accept that Vince really wants to be with him, Vince is persistent enough from the start that you know you don't have to worry about that.
      Next, he has the best friend in the world. Sandy/Helena is a great character.
      Paul's family is great. Very cartoonish, unrealistic and over the top, but still great.
      I wish Vince got more space though. I don't know much about him except that he is beautiful, not very bright and he may or may not have a mild case of OCD (the way he deals with different situations and all that). Still not enough.

      I can't say I loved everything about it, but that shock in the end deserves at least half a star of its own. Fortunately, it lasted just long enough for me not to start hating the book. And I really enjoyed the crazy 'I am warning you' prologue.
    • 3/5
      Paul Auster doesn't expect much of life. He sees himself as the definition of average, and he's okay with that. But his best friend Sandy (whose alter ego is drag queen Helena Handbasket) and everyone else in his life knows he is worth so much more. Which is why Paul is the only one who has a hard time believing someone as attractive and wonderful as Vince Taylor could actually be interested in him. Paul believes it's some kind of joke, even as Vince does his best to show he's sincere. But Vince has some things he's not sharing with Paul as well, and those things might just be enough to come between them and make everything fall apart.
    • 4/5
      I'm rating this one high for making me cry. Paul can be a bit annoying as a narrator because he likes to go off on fictional tangents, but it was that habit that also endeared him to me because my husband and I do the same thing and I think it gets on people's nerves. So yeah, good one. Nice romance story.
    • 4/5
      Disgustingly cute romance.
    • 4/5
      3.5 rounded up to 4 stars. I enjoyed the story for the most part. Was a bit too much rambling and going off tangent from the narrator and his BFF, but the romance was cute and I enjoyed the secondary characters.
    • 4/5
      There was certainly nothing 'meh' about this book. It had aspects I both loved and really fucking hated.

      Pros:

      I swear I nearly wet myself laughing in some places. I do have a sarcastic kind of sense of humour so I got Paul.

      Vince. I just really loved him.

      Helena. I want her book so badly. I want to read about her and Darren trading barbs and having lots of hate/love sex.

      The moments of sweetness that cut right through the ridiculousness and made me go from laughing my ass off to tearing up in seconds.

      Daddy Charlie. Loved him.

      Loved Paul's family.

      Cons:

      So much hate for women and their bits and, while one vagina-themed insult might be forgiven, the constant litany can only be misogyny and it was pretty gross.

      There was a lot of 'catch-phrasing' that, while cute and funny at first, became irritating. ('sweat balls' and 'language')

      What was with the racial stereotyping of the nurse???

      Overall, I liked more than I disliked (but the stuff I disliked is really problematic).

      One star for the secondary characters, one for Helena (she deserves one all to herself), one for the text messaging section which I frigging LOVED, and one for the sweet moments that hit me right in the heart.

    • 3/5
      It was impossible for me not to laugh during some of this. If you're in the mood to chuckle, check it out. I wasn't super crazy about Paul, but I liked him well enough, and I enjoyed the story.
    • 4/5
      So, here we are now!

      This was a ride and a half. As I said in my updates, this was a crackfic on meth, smoking pot, while chewing coca leaves. So THERE went the spelling, right out the window. And look, THERE went the politically correct, straight out the other window, without even opening it first. (The crash you just heard was the glass shattering, and falling to the ground several stories down, on all kinds of people who are not gay). And booom THERE went half of your fans, the female ones who can't handle that many gay men have issues with vaginas. LOL. (Yeah, there could have been a few less jokes and less dumping shit on the vagina, but hey, it takes a true connoisseur to appreciate the art of the female fancy parts). (No, knowing Helena Handbasket is not enough). And KABOOOM there went a bunch of people who don't like slurs of any kind.

      I don't mind, when it's done this way. I love it when everything gets put upside down and inside out, because THAT is where you notice it. People don't notice when others say "Oh, you're so gay," as if it's a weakness, something bad. Well, darn and dang, they'll notice when you change gay for others, like women, or fat people, or hispanics or so. Suddenly it's RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. So you notice.

      About bloody time, if you ask me. (But I still love my vag, so stop cussing it, will ya?)

      This book was pure crazy. It could most certainly have taken three more tours through the editing process, as both verbs and words were in the wrong tense and just plain wrong. Prepositions up the creek without a paddle. And usually that grates on my soul. Usually, I hate it.

      BUT HEY! I just laughed my ass off, I laughed and laughed, and then I laughed some more. In two separate instances I even woke up Mr Lund from my guffaws.

      So, even if the language wasn't up to Mr Klune's usual standards, I feel this book was written in one looooong sitting, maybe while he was writing some really deep and hurtful stuff in another book? (Into this River I Drown, comes to mind—that must have been a dark and heavy book to write, and this one would have cheered him up a lot).

      What saves the day here is how it all gets so fucking out of hand it borders on the comically tragic. Or the tragically comic. There is one instance where a serious discussion about in how many ways Paul could possibly destroy their relationship, and ends up, after mere minutes, to be all about the superhero costume that Sandy should be wearing. Something just goes SPACE-BOINK-OIK in my head.

      Crazy book is crazy. Now you will either love this book or you will hate it. There simply is no in-between.

      You all know where I stand. I am firmly in the corner with the two-legged, squeaky-wheels dog named Wheels and the homophobic, slurring parrot named Johnny Depp. We are having a ball over here.

      So, Mr Klune, please. Continue. We are all ears, over here. Feed us more words.
      Pretty please.


      ***
      I was NOT asked to read this book by anyone, I paid for it with my own money, as I do for all the books I read, all the music I listen to and the movies I watch.