Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reckoning” is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart—literally—as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn—but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from “one of horror’s modern masters” holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake listeners to the core.

• Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman
• Published: Blackstone Publishing on January 7, 2025
• Genre: Horror, dystopian, political
• Listening Length: 11 hours 11 minutes
• Dates Listened: 10.24.25 – 10.29.25
• Format: Audiobook (Libby)
• Narrators: Kelli Tager, Joe Hempel, Cary Hite, Neil Hellegers, Marni Penning, P. J. Ochlan, Noah Levine, Soneela Nankani, Charlotte Moore-Lambert, Megan Tusing
• Add on Goodreads
• Purchase on Amazon
• ⭐⭐⭐
• ☠☠
• 🌶🌶 (I honestly don’t even know that this book qualifies as typical “spice”, see below)

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Ok, my fellow book friends…I feel like this is one of those books where right off the bat, at least half of the people who start to read/listen to this are most likely going to DNF it within the first 15-25% of the book, never to look back. Whether that be because of the debauchery, the gore, the underlying political themes, who knows! But this is just one of those books that you’re either going to despise or you’re going to like, maybe love. There isn’t a whole lot of grey area for it.

I am not a huge political person, and I definitely don’t want this post, or my blog for that matter, to ever turn into a political platform. That’s not what I’m here for. But I do have a feeling that if you are an extreme leftist or rightist, you’re going to be one of the ones who immediately DNF it. Because in my personal experience, those seem to be the types of people who don’t have much of an open mind, and definitely seem to be less tolerant of opinions that don’t match up with their own. And this book kind of demands you to have an open mind. For those who decided to stick with the book, though, buckle your seatbelts because it’s going to be a bumpy, wild, grotesque ride for you.

At the heart of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, it is a gore-infested horror novel. It tells you right from the title what it wants you to do. Wake up!! Open your eyes!! Let’s forget for a moment that the book has any political undertones and ideas, shall we? This book is disgusting! It is depravity and debauchery. I strongly suggest anyone with even the slightest trigger on their list check it before diving in. If you do have a trigger…I promise, it will be in here. Triggers: animal death, animal cruelty, dismemberment, hypersexuality, incest, gun violence, cannibalism, hate crimes, homophobia, racism, religious bigotry…honestly, it would be easier to list what ISN’T in the book! lol As someone who loves all things horror, I have a pretty open mind and a strong stomach when it comes to what gets thrown into a horror story. But I just didn’t like how over sexualized this book was in regards to the gore. A mother caught masturbating by her adult son and pretty much sexually assaulting him, before chomping on his ear. A father masturbating to one of his favorite news anchors and a very detailed description of the…climax. Copious depictions of orgies and bestiality. Ok, some of it is for the shock factor, so I get it. But there was soooo much of it!! I felt like it was unnecessary to make the point that the world is going to hell and a handbasket, and at a certain point, the author was just trying to write horror porn. That was one of the biggest disappointments I had with the book, and likely would have given it a bit of a higher rating otherwise.

This is not a zombie outbreak. Get all those goddamn movies out of your mind. This is not an infection. It is not viral. Not in a COVID cough-cough kind of way. This is like some…some…I don’t know. Some sort of social plague.

As someone who has very opposite political views from a majority of my family, I found myself connecting at times with the main character, Noah. I even laughed out loud at some of his commentary early on, before shit hits the fan. Even though the book blurb makes it sound as if Noah is the main character, there really is no “main” character. We get a bit of his POV in the early stages, as he leaves his home in NYC to check on his parents in Virginia. Then it shifts perspective to his brother and his brother’s family. The entire middle portion of the book plays more like you’re doom-scrolling through social media and found video footage, as the different characters recount their experiences. You’re then returned to Noah and his attempt to save his nephew and finally return to his family in NYC. Some of the reviews that I’ve read on this book have said that they hated the middle, social media portion of the book, but I enjoyed it. I’m sure that the fact that I listened to the audiobook versus reading it had something to do with that. The voice actors did an amazing job!

Spoiler Alert: This does not have a happy ending. But that’s kind of to be expected in a horror novel, right? I’m a firm believer that not every book has to have a nice, neat, and tidy ending, where someone lives happily ever after. And for the extremists who likely bowed out in the beginning portion of the book because it didn’t match their political views, they will be disappointed. Because what we learn from the book is that we are ALL fucked!! It doesn’t matter your political views, because in the end, we’re all seriously fucked. Even the liberals who refuse to take a true stance on anything, like Noah, become brainwashed and possessed right along with the rest of the country. To me, the ultimate lesson to be had from the book isn’t that one political party is more right than another. But the author wants us to literally WAKE UP and OPEN OUR EYES! Start thinking for yourselves. Don’t believe everything that you’re force-fed from social media, news outlets, and politicians. Stop being brainwashed. And I’m just as guilty as the next person. I buy into the hype of a product, and before you know it, I’ve purchased it. In fact, just yesterday, I received a package of a 9-book series from an author that I have never read before, know nothing about, other than what I have seen pop up on my FYP page of TikTok. Did I need 9 more books from an author I know nothing about? Absolutely not! But…I loved the cover design, and…the series sounds like it will be good, and…it was on sale, and….they’re signed by the author, and…did I mention the gorgeous cover design? Oh, and it has sprayed edges too!! See!!! If the world decides to end in the “Great Reckoning” and we turn into overly sexual zombies feeding off each other, I will be right there with them. haha