Being True

By: Jacob Z Flores

Narrated by: Mark Westfield

Truman L. Cobbler has not had an easy life. It's bad enough people say he looks like Donkey from Shrek. He also suffered the death of his policeman father and his mother's remarriage to a professional swindler, who cost them everything. Now dirt poor, they live in the barrio of San Antonio, Texas.

When Tru transfers to an inner-city high school halfway through his senior year, he meets Javi Castillo, a popular and hot high school jock. Javi takes an immediate liking to Tru, and the two become friends. The odd pairing, however, rocks the school and sets the cliquish social circles askew. No one knows how to act or what to think when Mr. Popular takes a stand for Mr. Donkey. Will the cliques rise up to maintain status quo and lead Tru and Javi to heartbreak and disaster or will being true to who they are rule the day?

©2014 Jacob Flores (P)2015 Dreamspinner Press

the foundness of love

If you could sum up Being True in three words, what would they be?

romantic, understanding and truth

What did you like best about this story?

Some thing I really liked about the story is that how it shows a part of what is the secret of life and how love can really prosper no matter what

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

maybe the narrator could have shown more expression in his voice

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

totally would love to read it at once unless u are a homophobe then this story is not for u

Any additional comments?

I have taken a lot of interest into the book!

Sweet Story

If you could sum up Being True in three words, what would they be?

A simple but sweet story that makes you smile at the end of the day. Wishful and hopeful.

What a nice story

The author pulls you in nicely to the world the characters are in and there struggles. Will seek more written by this author from now on.

Highly recommend this one...

Great story!

I’m normally not a fan of YA novels anymore, the teenage angst and drama tends to be too much for me. Being True called to me though. There was something about it, even reading the blurb made me feel that this wasn’t the run of the mill YA story, there was more to it than that.

Truman, Tru, was starting a new school – again. It was his sixth. His looks makes him stand out, and not in the good way. He’s compared to the donkey in Shrek often enough, had his head shoved in the toilet and been beaten up often enough that he doesn’t have much hope that this school would be different. And in a way it wasn’t – and it was. He met Javi, a jock and most popular guy in school. The two become fast friends – causing confusion in the rest of the school.

I’m guessing most of us remember how it was being a teenager. The cliques, the social rules, the fear of being different, the fear of someone finding out your secrets (no matter what said secret was). Tru and Javi being friends broke all the rules – and I admire them for standing tall and not caving. Being open with their friendship. There was no hint of Javi wanting to hide Tru, he liked everyone for who they were, and in a high school student that’s remarkable and admirable.

There’s a lot of bullying and homophobia here. It’s never easy to listen to (or read about) and I think Flores handled it with great respect and, sadly, with a lot of credibility. He never gets preachy, but shows us that we only have to say no to intolerance to enforce change.

Being True wasn’t all angst and bullying. It was also a great story about friendships. I loved Claudia and would have loved to see more of this fierce young lady. But more than that it was a coming of age story, discovering who they were and what they wanted and trying to navigate life and the new feelings that arose. I really enjoyed it.

I’m going to start by saying that I don’t think that Mark Westfield was the best choice of narrator for this book. I don’t mean that his performance was lacking in any way, because it really didn’t. But this was a YA story and his deep and kind of grovely voice just didn’t fit the narrative. These boys were seventeen years old and not 35.

Ignoring the awkward fit, Westfield is a talented performer and definitely knows what he’s doing. I loved the pacing and intensity, it was just right. He also distinguished between the different characters making it easy for the listener to follow the story. I loved the special effects, like when Tru spoke in the microphone, or when someone called out from another room. It’s not something huge, and it’s only every now and then, but for me it makes such a huge difference to the feel and atmosphere of the book.

All in all this is definitely a book I’d recommend to others, it’s worth the time and heartache. Because in the end True Love does conquer all.

A copy of this book was generously provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review for Love Bytes.

Anti-bullying story both enhanced and diminished

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The book is told in first person. Yet, the writer's style is better as an omniscient third person narrator. The word choice and phrasing and the many many verbal flourishes don't seem as credible coming from a high school senior.

If you’ve listened to books by Jacob Z Flores before, how does this one compare?

I was actually much more comfortable with his phrasing in When Love Takes Over. Of course the excesses of Provincetown are a great camouflage for a bit over overwrought writing.

Which scene was your favorite?

The protagonists are so young that their physical shows of affection are very muted. The epilogue gives us a great chance to see them in a more erotic, less public time.

Any additional comments?

Listening to a book aloud sometimes highlights the awkwardness of the phrasings and this book has several examples of that, for example "cars' horns blared" sounds much more awkward than "car horns blared" whereas I'd probably not have noticed if I were reading rather than listening.

Narrator Mark Westfield does a commendable job with the narration here giving each character their own "voice" and deftly handling the varying levels of accents some of the Latino characters have. The women's voices are rendered as distinct without taking on the grating falsetto quality so often given them by male narrators. Also there are some special effects of sorts including speeches muffled by shoulders or made hollow by microphones that are well rendered.

Liked it very much n

the storyline is not much different than the other comming out in high school stories i have listened to, but what makes it stand out is the MC that tells the story. He makes u take notice of the story right away and u kind of know within the first few minutes that u will like the story. In the beginning he is kind of fatalistic and funny in the "of course this crappy thing too" kind of way. But he changes with the story and i liked that part - that u witness his thougth-processes getting more and more happy and feel him change. Nicely done and nicely narrated too.

Just loved it

Corney, yes, sweet, yes, tear jerker, yes, listen to it twice, yes!! The narrator is perfect. Hispanic men, YUM!😎💞😢🤧💔

More than a YA story - Wonderful

Truman is 17, in his last year of high school, and this is his 6th school in as many years. Due to his small stature he is the object of bullying and his poor single mother can do nothing more than move them to help the situation.

Javi is the star of the baseball team and a genuinely nice, great guy, part of a loving family.

After Tru gets beat up again (on the first day by Javi’s best friend), Javi rescues him and takes him home to his family where he is immediately embraced into the fold.
After that day Javi and Tru become best friends. Javi protects him as well as really enjoys his company, more than the other kids think he should.
When push comes to shove, Javi has to face the fact that he has feelings for Tru (admittedly gay, but not out officially). After facing the truth he has to decide what to do with the information but before he can decide things have heated up at school to the point where it may already be too late.
**
OMG! I loved this story. I’m not a huge YA fan, but I really love Jacob Flores and Mark Westfield so I decided to give this a try. Boy am I glad!
First, since this is their last year in HS most of what the boys are dealing with is adult enough not to feel awkward when it comes to relationship stuff.
Second, Jacob Flores is an excellent writer and he does an excellent job of creating two believable characters in situations that feel authentic. Javi is (perhaps) a bit too good to be true, but every story needs a hero and he is an absolutely wonderful one.
There are plenty of “bad guys” in this story, including most of Javi’s “friends” from the baseball team.
Tru is another wonderful character who just keeps trying and trying. He never gives up and I really liked that he didn’t perseverate on the future or have dire thoughts of suicide. He truly lived in the now and simply focused on doing the best with what he was given in that moment.
Claudia, the BFF, is another fantastic character – serving to give some attitude to the couple who are so sappily sweet.
I also loved that most of the characters in this story were non-caucasian but that race really wasn’t made much of an issue – if any.
It was a super sweet and lovely story and I highly recommend it.

Audio
Mark Westfield (who I really admired in the THIRDS books) disappointed me with this. He does a nice enough job and is easy to listen to, he gives Javi’s folks a bit of an accent, but I think that someone like Gomez Pugh would have rocked this as most of the characters in this were Hispanic and I think more accents would have made this sound more like I had it scripted in my head.
That being said, it was a nice (if not amazing) way to listen to this book and did not detract.

5 of 5 stars

Cheesy teen romance w/ awkward narration

The story was entertaining, but extremely cheesy. The depictions of high school students were oversimplified stereotypes, to include: the meat-head jocks, ditsy shallow girls, and the poor bullied gay kid. It lacked substance, except for the two main characters who displayed exceptionally mature behavior for teenagers (which made them highly unbelievable).

The narration made me feel uncomfortable at times. I can't say if it was the pronunciation or the affected voices the narrator used, or the timbre of his voice, but it was just very off-putting. There's a part (no spoilers) where the characters are speaking into a microphone, and the narration adds a strange echo effect to simulate the microphone. It was distracting and unnecessary, and detracted from the narration.