DNF @36%

So I read a little over a third of this before giving up, so I believe I’ve given it a fair chance. I tried to finish it but I just couldn’t bear to continue reading.

This is not a smart political satire, it’s the exact opposite. It is just plain gross and mistakes shock value for plot. I feel that I’m getting absolutely nothing out of reading this and I can’t think of a single person I would recommend it for. 

I read a lot of horror, but honestly, this book made me feel gross just reading it, and that is not something that has happened to me often. It isn’t the subject matter that is the problem, it’s the fact that it’s poorly written and has no real thought behind it.

 One of the most enjoyable things about picking up the new offering from Mr. Chapman is that you never know what you are going to get. Ghost Eaters put a lot of folks off fungi, Whisper Down the Lane brought back a whole lot of PTSD surrounding the “Satanic Panic,” and I’m not even going to go into the crustacean trauma surrounding What Kind of Mother that I still have. 

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes did not disappoint in the slightest. 

The story opens innocently enough. Noah Fairchild is a liberal family man living in Brooklyn who has distanced himself a bit from his Richmond, Virginia family after their years-long slide into the far-right cable media. When Noah’s mother leaves a voicemail rambling about the “Great Reawakening,” and Noah can’t reach her for clarification; he gets a tad concerned and sets out for Virginia to get to the bottom of this. 

What Noah finds is an utter nightmare, that, it turns out, isn’t just confined to his family: people across the country appear to be infected with a media-fueled demonic possession; fueled by exposure to television, apps, and other content. 

One of the things I appreciated the most in the presentation of this story was the implied multimedia presentation of the situation. Switching between recounts of TikTok feeds, news reports, personal videos, and other sources, the reader gets a quick snapshot of the insanity that seems to be spreading though the nation. The fever dream inclusion of Anderson Cooper as an imaginary narrator at one point really just drives the insanity aspect of this story home. 

Plus, I have to add, I picked one hell of a week to binge this one: the transition of power in the US government. 

As always with Mr. Chapman, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is very worth picking up. It’ll very much make you question where the “sickness” comes from. Just a bit of FYI, it has absolutely every single content warning that one might be able to think of. Definitely not for the faint of heart. 

I don’t know what I expected from a middle aged white man writing about extreme conservatism as a demon possession, but I should’ve known it would’ve been this stupid. 

What the fuck? I can't handle this book. I'm speechless right now