When We Were Real Audiobook By Daryl Gregory cover art

When We Were Real

Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

When We Were Real

By: Daryl Gregory
Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.24

Buy for $20.24

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.

JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last adventure: a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.

Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last—a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar—with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.

When We Were Real is “an addictive thriller packed with winning characters and big, brilliant ideas” (Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Bright Sword and The Magicians trilogy) and an exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.©2025 Daryl Gregory (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio
Adventure Humorous Science Fiction
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_webcro805_stickypopup
All stars
Most relevant  
I’ve really enjoyed this authors work. Not a huge fan of sci-fi/supernatural, but he has woven it together in his stories so well before. This book I felt no connection yo any of the characters though… they were grating or worse, bland. Found it hard to care what happened to them and sometimes didn’t even follow along the story. A little all over the place. Love his other work.

Wish the characters were more likable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This was ADVENTUROUS. Props to the author for having that kind of brain power lol

My head hurts

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

When We Were Real is the funny, smart, lighthearted but still poignant Matrix-esque story I needed. Loved it.

Funny, sharp, delightful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

This little book sounds like a lot less than it actually is, if you only read the description on here. In reality, it's a layered, intricate, and excellently witty work that keeps you laughing and guessing for a good while. I look forward to rereading it and seeing the characters surprise me, yet again!

An Unreal Trek

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.