I loved Maeve Fly the debut novel from the author and was so excited NetGalley and Tor Nightfire sent me an advanced copies of this book. It is everything I thought it would be and more. Sophie is a teen sheltered her entire life by her family's strict religious beliefs. When the world is struck by a deadly virus, Sophie is thrown out on her own on a mission to find her brother. As she tries the maneuver through this unfamiliar world, unfamiliar because of all the lies she has been told and unfamiliar because of the virus making everyone crazy, she begins to to question everything she thought was true and challenges her long held beliefs. This book has everything a horror, gore, religious trauma, a post apocalyptic world but it is also a coming of age story, finding a new family, and questioning authority. Very smartly written. I absolutely LOVED this book.

American Rapture is intense, traumatic, heart breaking and violent. It’s a wild ride through a post-apocalyptic world following a sheltered 16 year old girl brought up by overbearing catholic parents. I went in not really knowing what to expect. I knew I loved Maeve Fly and I loved the idea of a post apocalyptic wasteland. It’s very different from Maeve Fly though, and it needed to be. CJ Leede absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one while showing off her range as an author. I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy and look forward to what she writes next!

This book has left me speechless. It made me cry. It made me laugh. It made me cringe at parts of the catholic experience. It made me empathize with how misinformation regarding a pandemic could impact communities. If you have any catholic guilt you will relate so much to this book. But outside of all of that, it is also one of the best horror stories I have ever read. It’s a zombie story in a way. Except the zombies are just full of lust and will die eventually.

It is also a story that explores grief and the nature of life. One thing in the author’s note that really stuck out to me was how “horror looks the darkness in the eyes” and how this story explores some of the dark sides of humanity. This is a story that will stick with me for many years to come and will need to be reread many, many times. And I don’t say that about very many books. There are also some well-written deaths that are so impactful in the writing, but I don’t know if I can forgive the author for how much they hurt.

Thank you to @tornightfire for my ARC. All thoughts are my own.

Having loved Maeve Fly as much as I did, American Rapture was a must read for me this year. I wanted to savor it, but I flew through it in a day, and I loved this one just as much. This one had a lot going on, but it all flowed well. We have a sheltered, innocent teenage girl raised in a strict catholic home, who finds herself in the middle of a sex-crazed pandemic. Coming of age, violence, mass panic, obviously trying to survive a pandemic, American Rapture was so fast paced and had me on the edge of my seat the entire ride. I was really sad with that ending, but I freaking loved it all the same. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give away anything, go in to it with time on your hands because you won’t want to peel yourself from it. Thanks to Tor Nightfire for my eARC. American Rapture will be available tomorrow.

Tentative 5 stars - for me, this book was a start-to-finish Good Read. However, it is absolutely not universally appealing. It is graphic, uncomfortable, and deals with extreme themes that not many authors will tackle. Between the religious trauma, underage narrator, sexual violence, and political and religious radicalization, most readers will need a palate cleanser afterwards. Some horror is more creeping and psychological, some is in-your-face, and this is both. I think CJ Leede is an excellent writer and if anyone had to come up with this, I'm glad it was her.

I’m obsessed with MAEVE FLY by CJ Leede and I’m happy to report she did not disappoint with her second book! She is one of the best writers out there right now🔥

AMERICAN RAPTURE follows Sophie, a sheltered Catholic teen, as a virus turns America feral with lust. She has to navigate an apocalyptic Wisconsin while trying to track down her twin brother. Along the way she forms a rag-tag crew and works through her religious trauma and sexual awakening.

Leede really knows how to gross readers out, then totally break our hearts. There’s no shortage of anxiety-inducing action in AMERICAN RAPTURE but there’s also humor and these profound, quiet moments of reflection for the characters that hit hard.

Two books in, I’ve learned that Leede doesn’t give you the ending you want, but it’s the one you need.

Do I need a trip to Wisconsin to check out The House on the Rock now? 🤔

⚠️ Don’t forget to check trigger warnings before reading

American Rapture is a great story with interesting characters. It's like a combination of TWD and organized religion. It shows how religion can harm a person. It's a real page-turner that will be hard to put down. I was really impressed by the author. She really knocked it out of the park with this one. It's one of the best horror books I've read this year. I highly recommend this book!

Thank you so much to Netgalley, Tor Nightfire, and CJ Leede for approving me for an arc copy of American Rapture in exchange for an honest review. As a big fan of Maeve Fly, I have been anxiously awaiting this book, and it completely surpassed any expectations I had of what American Rapture could entail.

A coming of age reckoning, American Rapture follows Sophie in the wake of a ravaging virus that is rapidly spreading throughout the US. Those infected experience a myriad of intense symptoms, the foremost, and most dangerous, being insatiable lust. Sophie, a devout Catholic, must venture through this terrifying new landscape of sin and hellfire through the midwest to try and find her family.

This book absolutely blew me away, and I almost find it hard to express all that this storyline contains and everything that it meant to me and made me feel. I loved it and it is easily one of my favorite books I have read all year. The storyline is fraught with tension and feels magnetized and full of energy. It goes deeper than mere surface level horror and is harrowing in the depths of humanity that it shows. As you follow the different characters on their journey, it becomes gut wrenching and heartbreaking. It is brimming with emotion that makes you ache with the characters. Although it is gruesome and horrific, it’s also weighty with inescapable sadness and despair. I felt the story deeply and even cried during the more emotional scenes. As a reader, you feel like you know the characters because they are so full of life, even as they face insurmountable odds. You follow them into free-falling chaos and you can’t look away until the end of the book. If you enjoy coming of age introspection, deep horror, found family, and examinations of religion, this book is definitely for you. American Rapture by CJ Leede is publishing next week on October 15th and if your reading tastes are anything like mine, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A fresh take on the horrors of organized religion, this novel takes readers on a captivating ride. There is a hook from the start, with character development that maintains engagement. The commentary is clear, while still well woven into traditional horror elements. A fascinating tale.

I'm not much of a horror reader, but I couldn't put this book down. I found the exploration of religion, and its justification to commit heinous acts, really interesting especially in the context of a pandemic. The relationships in this book were very tender and genuine, and I found myself rooting for them after the last page. A perfect read for spooky season!

I'd read the author's previous book so I kind of knew what to expect going into this one, but I was really impressed! I like how the book wasn't just gross and disturbing just to be gross and disturbing, but actually had some thoughtful plot moments. I appreciated the reflections about Catholicism that happened in here. Definitely going to be a challenging book for a lot of readers.

I am officially obsessed with this author. I read Maeve Fly as an arc and was unbearable telling everyone about it. Now I'm 2/2 with 5⭐ for American Rapture.

Sophie, a sheltered teenager raised in a strict Catholic lifestyle finds herself fighting for her life in the end of times. And in true “Zombie” horror fashion she picks up a motley crew of survivors as she journeys across the country and learn the true lesson: people are the virus.

The amount of angst in this book is epic, I was swinging back and forth, hurting my own feelings, and getting angry at fictional men 🤷🏻‍♀️ There are a lot of content warnings for this story but you have to respect the level of care Leede takes in her approach.

I loved every sentence.

“Women’s beauty draws the darkness. It is the darkness.”

I thought I knew I what I could expect reading American Rapture. I was wrong in the best of ways.

I wasn’t raised religious so Sophie’s experience was new to me. CJ Leede handled it with such care, from explaining Sophie’s sheltered life and the guilt that never stopped haunting her.

Pandemic type horror stories have started to become my favorites. All bets are off and they have this way of magnifying both the beauty and ugliness of our world. American Rapture was no different. It’s scary how much of it I could see happening in real life.

While I 100% expected to have a good time, I didn’t expect to almost be left crying in the grocery store as I was finishing. There’s a found family element that made this more emotional at times. Every character Sophie surrounded herself with forced her to grow and step outside of her comfort zone, resulting in a beautiful cheater arc.

I can’t say enough good things about this book. It comes out on Tuesday, so go preorder it!!

Last year, I read this author’s debut novel, “Maeve Fly”. I enjoyed the camp in it, the dark humor, the splatterpunk vibe and the story overall. I was expecting something similar with this book, but I had no idea what I was in for. This reminds me of two of my favorite books, Stephen King’s “The Stand” and Robert McCammon’s “Swan Song” - only instead of the coming-of-age story about Swan, we have the story of Sophie.

Sophie is almost seventeen, a midwestern Catholic virgin who reads clandestine books (aka anything other than the Bible), especially enjoying the books “For Dummies”. She has a twin brother named Noah, who was sent to something of a group home five years prior. His sin? Having a contraband magazine in his room. Now at Sacred Hearts, he and Sophie are only allowed one phone call per week. The rest of her time is spent in misery with her pious parents and their religious fervor.

Then, the worst happens. Another pandemic is killing people on the east coast, and is heading towards the Midwest. NARS-CoV will kill you as quickly as Covid did to people in 2020, but if you’re very unlucky, you could also get HPSV, colloquially known as Sylvia. Sylvia makes people manic with lust, and the infected will rape and kill anyone they come across - even family members. I thought this would be the part with some camp, but this is a brutal virus and the side effects are equally savage.

Sophie decides to venture out on her own and find her twin, but as she’s driving towards Sacred Hearts, she gets stuck in a traffic jam and an officer named Maro finds out she’s a minor. He insists on taking her with him, which leads to them finding their people - Ben, a boy from Sophie’s school, his newfound friend Helen, a little boy named Wyatt, a kind woman named Cleo, and a dog, Barghest. This group forms a family, as they all fight for each other to stay safe.

Once out in the secular world, Sophie realizes how sheltered she has been. Her upbringing didn’t just deny her knowledge, it denied her life, and now she’s experiencing it for the first time. She is a fantastic character (all of the characters were written flawlessly) and her quest to find her brother is suspenseful and terrifying. This book is excruciatingly heartbreaking, feral, shocking, horrific and undeniably human. Reading the author’s notes at the end broke my heart all over again, and I also found out she spent ten years writing this. The time was worth it, because this book is perfection; it will be in my top five books of 2024, for sure. Five stars.

(Thank you to Tor Nightfire, C.J. Leede and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on October 15, 2024.)

Sophie is a god-fearing 16 year old in the great state of Wisconsin. She has always attended a strict Catholic school and her parents have limited her knowledge outside the Catholic Church. Sophie is so sheltered she doesn’t even know about the pandemic spreading through the Midwest.

My thoughts:
Holy shit. I won’t give more details about the pandemic because I think everyone should just go in blind. This started out so strong and didn’t stop until the last page. I could sense where some things would go but for 90% I was 🫨 These characters were so well developed. I cared for each and every one of them. I think a lot of people raised Catholic will resonate with this one (I wasn’t raised Catholic for whatever that’s worth). I loved the writing style and the plot points were so smart! Sophie is a teenager but her narration doesn’t give YA (thank god). Some people will be mad about a certain part but I agree with it.

This is not Maeve Fly part 2 and I’m so glad it’s different. I loved both! CJ Leede is quickly becoming an auto-buy author for me. I can’t wait to get a signed copy from aardvark in November!

Ethel Cain fans, this one is for you.

I love any book that reckons with religious trauma through the lens of horror and camp and this does all of that tremendously well.

I have a lot of feelings about this book. A lot of them are personal and heavy. I didn't find this book as scary as Leede's first book but I did enjoy it more. I grew up in an extremely religious environment so this book's effect on me was visceral. This story hurt in a lot or place and I do wish it had some trigger warning but really thats the only complaint I have.
I definitely don't see this being a book for everyone but I can see it being extremely popular with those it is for. Those of us with some deep deep religious trauma can definitely benefit from this. Also just those who enjoy horror. Overall this is a heavy book but a really good one.

This is so good! I am a forever CJ Leede fan and this was no different. I think it will especially hit for folks with religious trauma.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an early copy for review.

Wow, American Rapture really packs a punch. We follow our main character, Sophie at the onset of a horrific pandemic outbreak in the US. Sophie has lived an extremely sheltered life, with many aspects of her day to day being controlled by her parents. When people in her town start to get sick, she is completely unprepared for what is about to happen.

This was such a powerful horror novel, full of emotion and coming of age moments. Over the course of the book, Sophie forms new relationships and learns to question the way she was raised. This book had a big impact on me, and I will definitely be thinking about the themes and characters long after I’ve finished reading.

Musings:

non-spoiler section

I did not expect that before I even started to write this review, thinking about the events in this book would bring tears to my eyes. It has effected me so much more in the days since reading it then, it did in the moment. Yet, I suspect that is because I was experiencing the shock of an apocalyptic world right alongside Sophie. It has taken me these days to really sit with “American Rapture” and remember in order to fully appreciate all the details that make this one of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

The exploration of religious trauma helped me to heal a trauma I have related to someone I once loved who experienced parenting not very different from the parents in this book. Religious extremism like what is found here, leaving Sophie so deeply disconnected from the realities of the world is a very real thing. I am happy to know it is a rare thing, but the little it touched my life, it left me with a pain that carried with me for years since that person was gone from my life. Reading through Sophie’s gaze with the shocks of the realities of the real world bared in equal measures beautifully as horrifically before her, having her cling desperately to a world view that is clinging by a thread, it left me with a deeper understanding of what it means to grow up in that way. It is not something that you can cut out of you and change within a blink of an eye. It is something that you have to heal from painstakingly slow over many many years.

Silvia, a virus that leads you to experience intense sexual and violent desires and kills you after 3 days, is no joke. If this ever became a reality, considering how the Covid pandemic had been handled, I know we would be as screwed as the characters in this novel. The acts committed by the infected in “American Rapture” are grotesque. It leaves you with a feeling of hopelessness and despair and yet there is so much hope and discovery to be found in this novel. The twin truths of horror and what it means to be beautifully, wholly alive are the pillars of this entire story.

I loved deeply the way CJ Leede added details that shared the societal clash of ideas with the billboards being passed on the highway. Religious ads clashing with ads for male enhancements. It added this lush detail that ultimately is the main theme of “American Rapture” the meeting and clashing of the religious and modern worlds.

Heavy Spoiler Warning

As Sophie and her new found family makes their way across highways together to find Sophie’s twin brother, each person gives her exposure to new ideas about the world she never thought about before.

Maro the policeman who feels responsible for her teaches her more in an indirect way. Sophie watches him and sees his youth, heroism, and his lust for and relationships with other women, and she finds herself longing for him and discovering that she has desire within herself.

Ben who has liked her before the pandemic and is her age teaches her a lust she can have. His is a gentle nudge towards ideas. A knowing in himself that Sophie has her eyes open and is struggling to figure out what he feels. He is a friend and more that allows her the space to decide for herself.

Helen is a girl full of life and who embraces every moment and new experience in a way that terrifies Sophie. Yet, she too ignites a feeling of want in Sophie. A want for not only Helen, but a want to taste all that life has to offer.

Cleo is a full adult women that takes it upon herself to give Sophie some direct advice and education. She gives Sophie her phone so she can research for herself things that Sophie doesn’t know about and should learn for herself. Cleo is the most direct mentor that Sophie meets and I loved the connection the two women form. Having someone in your life to give you the tools to discover what you need to know with nudges in the right direction are so powerful and necessary for us all.

One of the most beautiful and heartbreaking relationships in “American Rapture” is between Sophie and Barghest the dog. Anyone who has ever loved and lost a dog will understand how powerful and fierce the love between those two was. Barghest is a huge dog who saves Sophie’s life multiple times. He is the greatest hero in the entire book and that includes his disturbing fiery death. Yes the dog does indeed die in this book. It is a deeply important plot line in the book. Horror does not pick and choose. The ones you love most, innocent or not, all can and will be touched by horror.

Last year I lost my dog Gypsy. We’d had her for 15 years and she was already frail and dying and we knew we had to take her in to have her be put down. I had my hand on her heart till its final beats. I wanted her to know that we were there for her. That I was there for her till the very end. I will always love her with the entirety of who I am.

Normally, I would think that a dog death would be triggering. However, in this book, while it was devastatingly horrible, Barghest died as he lived, a true hero. He loved Sophie so much and he didn’t care or know the danger he put himself in and it became the end of him. Our dogs are our friends, family, and protectors. Barghest’s story in “American Rapture” is a beautiful tragedy.

Final thoughts spoiler free once more

As “American Rapture” came to an end I was struck by a feeling of beauty and awe. Yes, this book has some very horrific and awful scenes, but it is through horror and facing it that we find the deepest truths within ourselves. How we deal with terror and what we choose to do in the thick of it defines us. Do we give in to despair or do we come together and fight against it? What is it that we truly want to live for? What makes us feel the most alive?

I will recommend this book from now and until I am no longer a part of this world. Since my blog makes my words permanent… into forever-after as well. “American Rapture” will make you ache something fierce. Read it once to experience it for yourself, read it twice to let the details sink in, then again and again because a book like this deserves to be read in all the stages of your life.