I had as much fun reading this book as a person can! The gore and horror was there for sure. The obvious political, governmental, social, and psychological horror was super abundant. Basically, this was just almost perfect for me. I read some parts like “WTF did I just read?” Other times, I was just nodding and highlighting— I even giggled a few times. This was fun, disgusting, and so relevant- in the best ways. A solid 4 ⭐️!

Thank you to NetGalley and Quirk books for this ARC for my unbiased review and opinion.

One would be hard pressed to have a more perfectly timed and topical release than Clay McLeod Champan's latest. Landing in bookstores roughly two weeks prior to the inauguration of Donald Trump's second term in office, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes might be the most spot-on summation of this November's election results, in which 76 million voters chose to Make America Hate Again, and the widespread effectiveness of far-right propaganda as filtered and sanitized through mainstream media.

In the weeks following Thanksgiving, Noah's parents have grown progressively, and troublingly, more conservative thanks to their steady diet of Fax News. They've become incredibly open in their racism and transphobia, spouting conspiracy theories as facts around the dinner table, and demanding that certain segments of the population -- people like Noah's dark-skinned wife -- get the hell out of their country. It's not just Noah's parents, though. His brother and his brother's wife and children are also growing more deranged. So are an awful lot of other people in the country, as school shootings grow more and more widespread, spouses begin killing one another en masse, and neighbors attack one another. After being unable to reach his parents, and unable to rely on his brother to check on them, Noah leaves his family to check on Mom and Dad. What he finds beyond the once-safe confines of his liberal enclave is a country that has gone completely insane, driven to madness and violence, and possessed thoroughly by an almost demonic level of hate and fear.

At the center of this burgeoning American apocalypse is the right-wing news channel, Fax News, and its arrogant, blowhard anchors and commentators who spout endless litanies of grievances and all the things wrong about our country. Chapman doesn't end there, though, widening the scope of his widescreen horror show to encompass Internet influencers and clout chasers and catchy kids' songs, like the cloyingly, sweetly familiar "Baby Ghost" that has amassed billions of YouTube clicks. The end of the world as we know it has become a viral meme encouraging soft-minded viewers to wake up and open their eyes, and to do so in the deadliest ways possible.

Chapman spares no expense in plumbing the horrors here, with the entire country plunging into self-made, war-torn chaos. Impromptu mass orgies turn cannibalistic as the party of family values get their real freak on. Motor vehicles become two-ton assault carriers and battle rams, school children turn to social media to learn how to craft improvised explosives, and kitchen utensils are harnessed as gut-churningly deadly weapons as Chapman does for pizza slicers and blenders what Evil Dead Rise did for cheese graters.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a violent assault upon the senses, but its social themes and commentary are what really stung the most. Seeing Noah's family fall from grace rang bitingly true and familiar, as they grow overwhelmed by and fall victim to a much-too steady diet of right-wing news. Having grown up in a conservative household where Rush Limbaugh was constantly spouting off through the car's stereo speakers and Fox News was by and large the only TV station that existed in my parent's world, I couldn't help but sympathize with Noah, especially as he sees the changes in his parents begin to slowly accumulate over the years and eventually make them unrecognizable. My father, in particular, was a victim of Fox News brain rot, exacerbated further by worsening dementia, and I had to watch as he steadily grew from a Democrat to Reagan Republican to devout Limbaugh listener, becoming ever more racist and conspiracy-minded as the years went on, descending into a full-throated, Trump-worshipping fascist.

While Chapman goes to the extremes in his development of what becomes known as "Fax News Brain Rot," its real-world corollary is certainly a concern for those of us who appreciated American democracy, civility, kindness, ethics, and basic human morality, values that have apparently gone entirely by the wayside for half the country in the hopes for cheaper eggs. And while Chapman rightly, properly, and necessarily skewers right-wing politics, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is hardly a liberal hagiography. While the right descends into chaos and murder, the left are largely depicted as selfish and clueless. Take, for instance, a small group of survivors armed with guns they have no idea how to use, and dressed in eye-achingly brightly colored hunting gear. Chapman's final denouement is about as much of downbeat beatdown of American liberals as one can conjure, not that it's exactly fair and balanced given the wider scope of the narrative at play here, nor are right-wing snowflakes likely to even make it that far before they toss this book aside and decry it for being "woke."

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a perfectly timed takedown of right versus left politics, particularly given the disastrous election results we'll all be paying for over the next few years. Rightfully angry, violently cathartic, at times squirm-inducingly and anxiety-spikingly so, Chapman goes hard and full-speed ahead with this truly American horror story.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is about a sort of mind-virus triggered by a right-wing media company, which creates hateful monsters out of peoples' loved ones.

I want to start this review by mentioning that I love Clary McLeod Chapman, and I think this was stylistically interesting and at times, pretty scary.

However, this one just really didn't resonate with me. I appreciate the message - I think it's timely - but at times it felt a bit on the nose in a way that made me roll my eyes. The style was really interesting, but also got a bit repetitive. I wished there was more narrative and plot and less descriptions of online videos and repetition of certain phrases. I don't doubt this was intentional - and I think it'll work for others in a way it didn't for me.

I also just couldn't really figure out the politics. I think that the "gotcha" twist just undermined the story.

“This is not our horror story. This is your fucking horror story. An American Horror Story . . . But whose America, am I right?”

Disclaimer: The plot of this book will be extremely offensive if the narrative doesn’t fit your political viewpoint.

Wake up and open your eyes…The Great Reawakening is happening on December twentieth. Noah had a disagreement about politics with his conservative parents on Thanksgiving and has since kept his distance. However, when his mother’s phone calls become increasingly incoherent and then abruptly end, he drives from New York to Virginia to check on his parents’ well-being.

When he arrives at their house, he finds his parents completely transformed into something beyond recognition. But it’s not just his parents who have been infected. It appears that all of the viewers of Fax News-Just the Facts- have been indoctrinated into a zombie cult. “Fax News Brain. It’s spreading. It’s communicable. Mad cow disease for conservatives.” Can Noah save his family?

“It’s every Democrat for themselves out here. Survival of the leftist. You know you’re next if you don’t keep running.”

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a political satire and social horror novel which preaches conservative politics and Fax News will turn you into a sex-crazed zombie. In this political apocalypse, Noah, a Democrat, must fight to survive. It is an uncomfortable, timely, and polarizing novel that is certain to get people talking.

Note: It was extremely difficult to read in the weeks before the U.S. presidential election.

Trigger warnings: School shooting, strong sexual content

3.5/5 stars rounded up

Expected publication date: 1/7/25

A satirical yet brazingly honest look into our very likely upcoming future, this book is destined for the banned book list.

I did not finish this one. There are just too many sexually explicit scenes that left me feeling icky and horrified. Which I think was the point. Like stuff happened right at the beginning that is downright taboo and makes me feel ashamed to even think back on. It's also a VERY heavy political allegory; I'm sure it'll make lots of people mad.

This book is, in my opinion, the best work that Chapman has written to date. It is a totally mind-bending read that will make you utter a "what the f**K?" several times while reading it. i had to put the book down quite a few times and take a breather while reading simply because the actions described in the book are that trippy.

I've read a few of his works, and think this book is where Chapman really hits it out of the park. I am grateful to the publisher and netgalley for allowing me to be able to read it.

_Wake Up and Open Your Eyes_ by Clay McLeod Chapman is a disturbing and intensifying apocalyptic horror read with unsettling familiar characters. Noah Fairchild heads back to his childhood home in Virginia, worried about his conservative parents that he has been unable to contact. When he arrives he finds the house in horrible condition and his parents violently possessed from watching far-right news. Noah fleas, in search of his brother and his family on his way back home to New York, only to find more violence and demons along the way home. This read is unputdownable in its familiar horror.

Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is an interesting and thought provoking look at radicalism and fear through a horror lens that sometimes feels surface level but at other times is important and terrifying.

What a perfect read for the year of a presidential election! This book was filled with horror and emotion and an all too real nightmare of social media and politics. Shocking and bloody scenes are not for the faint of heart. Wake Up and Open Your Eyes!

This book is very…timely. Very fitting for the season and WAY too close for comfort. This was a frenzied, fevered fugue state kind of acid trip look at the far-right political party and social media as it *nearly* is today; but goddamn, Chapman went for it and I have to imagine it was some kind of cathartic, yet genius way of coping? (not sure if that’s really the word I’m looking for) with the absolute asinine nonsense going on in America at the moment. The horror aspect obviously pushed the story over the edge in terms of reality, but it was like, “Finally, somebody is able to convey the lunacy, the pile of mush that somehow passes for brains.”

Oops, I realize I semi went into a rant there–I just had a pretty visceral reaction to this book. The horror is brilliant; to reinvent the absurd political stance as akin to a demonic possession is just clever as hell. The gore was as I expected it to be; Clay, you haven’t let me down yet!

I briefly want to touch on what I didn’t loooove about the book, which was the spaced out text or formatting…not exactly sure how to describe it. It felt disjointed, fragmented, just kinda took me out of the story or didn’t allow me to connect as much as I would have liked?? It very possibly could’ve been a “me” thing.

Chapman didn’t hold back on this one–it’s nasty, it’s brutal and I don’t think you’ll want to miss it!

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an advanced copy; I appreciate it more than ya’ll could imagine :) <3

I feel like this will find it's audience, but this wasn't entirely for me. I love how passionate the author is about the theme of the book and the real life horrors. The things the author is talking about are things that are currently happening in the US (minus the ear chomping mother). However, this book is not subtle about it at all and that is not my favorite. Just my personal preference. All in all, this book was truly terrifying, especially in some of its imagery. If the premise interests you, I would recommend you checking it out.

An interesting concept but lagged in the middle for me--started feeling very repetitive through some sections where I felt like the point had been made. My read paused for weeks in the middle and when I picked back up it felt like deja-vu and I continued by skimming to try to get through to new-feeling content. Felt like the middle section was trying to go in a Max Brooks' direction with all the first-person found footage, but the difference for me was that again, those felt repetitive and didn't seem to move the narrative forward in a significant way. The writing was strong, but I would have wanted to see this edited a bit tighter.

A wonderfully disgusting "screw you" to all the media; social and otherwise, that constantly preys upon our fears of inadequacy, while also assuring us that it's all going to be ok as long as we vote for the right people, hate the right people, buy the right products, follow the right influencers.

It's not just old coots watching "Fax" News 24 hours a day, it's the tech-obsessed millennials and side-hustle, MLMers, hoping to make it big on the "sosh."

But once you're infected, there's no cure, except to wake up and open your eyes.

A possession story like no other. First, I’m so glad that Clay was the one to write this. His weirdness bleeds through every single page. The prose is so creepy. Love it. Can’t get enough of it. The idea is that the news/social media brainwashes us in a possession-esque way. To some, this book will come off as too woke or virtue signaling. I’d prefer if people didn’t treat it like that and instead read it as a fascinating, and sometimes satirical, look at how susceptible we are to the messages that bring out the worst in us. A surprisingly important book from one of horror’s best. Highly recommend.

It's seldom that I read a book that truly stays with me, but this is one of those; mainly because it scared the pants off of me. Chapman is a true master of horror, and this one was all the more visceral because one could actually imagine it happening. In many ways, it already is. If Grady Hendrix and Stephen King had a baby, it would be Clay McLeod Chapman, and he would have grown up to write this book. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys thrillers and horror, but be prepared that certain portions are quite "illustrative."

It's been a couple days since I've finished this book and I'm still at a loss over my thoughts. I thought it was a cool concept filled with great imagery and a unique take on zombies.

However, I felt that in the quest to show the decrepit erosion of society, Chapman sometimes lost the thread of the story. The middle part especially felt long and then suddenly I was thrust into the perspective of the first protagonist in the third part of the book. It made it difficult to connect to the characters and feel connected to the stakes.

I'm genuinely at a loss as to whether I'd recommend this book. A lot of the imageries were grotesque and fantastic but is it enough to carry a wayward storyline? I'm not sure.

I enjoy horror novels, but the body horror element of this book was too gross for me. It was a DNF. I did like the concept.

Frenetic. If I could describe "Wake Up and Open Your Eyes" in one word it'd be frenetic.

This one starts with a bang. It's viscous and vile and pulls no punches. It's harsher, more gore-filled, than some of Chapman's previous work. That opener is a banger.

The book is certainly political and filled to the brim with social commentary. I think it'll be polarizing, but I enjoyed it. I appreciate that it takes a common trope, in this case demonic possession, and turns it on its head. Chapman is so talented in this regard.

I’m not sure it quite stuck the landing, but the middle section depicting the Fairchild family’s descent into madness was very well done. I thought the narrative voices and the clips of video / social media testimony were spot-on. Gross enough in some parts to make me gag, there are some visceral thrills here.