They save his life and his presence heralds the end of a temporary idyll. The adventures of the book hinge upon the family’s discovery of an extremely handsome android almost dead in the Scrap Yards. Press play to hear a narrated version of this story, presented by AudioHopper.Īs with many excellent dramas, everything changes when a stranger enters their lives and how we view the outcome depends on whether Victor is named for optimism or irony. In the Lives of Puppets opens with them completely isolated and, though it is not initially clear what Gio knows of the wider world, the other three start by knowing nothing beyond their homestead. Living together in the forest, in a repurposed cabin and a tree house built by Gio, the odd group form a family. Gio is a wise, loving and perfectly lifelike android Nurse Ratchet is a large, cabinet-like mobile medical unit with a brutal bedside manner but an empathy protocol several petabytes wide and Rambo is a small, naive and enthusiastic vacuum unit. This time the protagonist is Victor Lawson, who lives in a forest near the Scrap Yards with his adoptive father Gio, and his friends Nurse Ratchet and Rambo. 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.The fate of humanity is in the balance once again for TJ Klune, author of the 2020 New York Times best-seller, The House in the Cerulean Sea. The only thing stopping Paul from believing in Vince is himself – and that is one obstacle Paul can’t quite seem to overcome.

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

His closest friends are a two-legged dog named Wheels and a quasibipolar drag queen named Helena Handbasket. He’s thirty, slightly overweight, and his best features are his acerbic wit and the color commentary he provides as life passes him by.

Tell Me It's Real by T.J. Klune