Noah begins to worry about his parents when his mom leaves a series of alarming voicemails about how he should be prepared for the Great Reawakening. When he gets several messages in one day, his parents won’t answer their phone, and he can’t get ahold of his brother Asher, Noah makes the trip from New York to Virginia to check on them. He finds his parents both in a  trance, unbathed, unfed, the house in shambles, with the conservative news station blasting on every TV. Noah knows they need help and he’s considering calling the police when his parents attack him. He escapes the house and realizes this is happening at other homes.  People across the country are being turned into zombies by particular channels, apps and websites they access on their screens. Like Noah’s sister-in-law Devon, who has been brainwashed by a “wellness” influencer on social media. Folks are violently attacking their families, engaging in disturbing sexual behaviors and rioting. Noah is unaffected, and he finds himself fighting to get back to his wife and daughter in New York without becoming infected or the victim of the possessed mobs. 

CW: Brutal body horror, disturbing sexual content, child death, animal death, school violence, politics… there’s probably more.

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I picked this up knowing it was social horror and satire, yet it was still surprising to me 1) how deeply disturbing it was and 2) how I absolutely could not look away. While I’m making lists of two, there were two things that really stood out to me. First, the description of Asher’s downward spiral into conservative media. He started out as someone who kind of side-eyed those channels, and quite quickly got sucked into the fear mongering tactics. Second, how Devon and Asher’s older son became ensnared through stealthier means - wellness influencers on Instagram and bots on Twitter. I mean, this is literally how people get sucked in, and the brainwashing is just as terrifying as the body horror. What wasn’t my favorite: The social media and news clip transcripts did not add to the story in my opinion and added unnecessary length to the book. 

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

If Clay McLeod Chapman has zero fans I am ✨dead✨ 

I don't know what he puts into his books to make them so damn good but I hope he never stops writing. This was a cool take on "zombies"/epidemic/brainwashing? I don't even know how to describe it honestly. It reminded me of American Rapture by CJ Leede but political instead of religious. I like to go into books blind and I think that's the best approach for this book as well because there's no way you can properly describe what happens in this book. I'm sure for a lot of people it'll be a book they love or hate but I personally loved it ☺️

I am so disappointed, but I had to DNF this book. I was so excited to read this new horror, which imagines that demonic possession is happening through right-wing news. But why did I have to read sexually explicit things between a mother and son multiple times in the first few chapters? This book is gory and gruesome and women are reduced to hyper-sexual beings. For those reasons, I had to put it down.

 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.