A review by minimicropup
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This was horrible (in the best way). There were bizarre symbolic horrors (that mirror a little too closely what life next door looks like right now 🥺) and social commentary with lots of disturbing and thought-provoking moments. I just didn’t like the very end, it felt too overstuffed and chaotic.

 Energy: Disturbed. Jaunty. Controversial.
 
🐺 Growls: The end piled on so many horror themes on top of the social message. All those layers of trauma, commentary, and surreal events got too chaotic for me. The ending felt kinda preachy or soapboxy, but I also didn’t fully get it either so maybe I’m missing the point. The audiobook made the eerie scenes accidentally funny, which didn’t happen in the text (I wish they had real background sounds in audio instead of making the narrator mimic them).
 
🐕 Howls: The random tangents like nursery rhymes, grotesque comparisons, and unhinged sex stuff sometimes felt a bit too silly or satirical. Some scene transitions were unclear, so I got lost on where everyone was and who was there. The action scenes had those moments where everything's happening fast but then there's a long pause for reflection or thinking it through (I pictured everyone just frozen mid-action).
 
🐩 Tail Wags: The surreal, intensely symbolic horror. The disturbing action scenes. The mix of grotesque imagery, apocalyptic chaos, haunted media tropes, and references to other horror works (including recent ones!). The fever-dream quality. The pointed commentary.
 
Scene: 🇺🇸 Mostly in Virginia, USA
Perspectives (5): A Brooklynite returning to their childhood home to check on their parents after they stop responding. Their brother who gets hooked on news channels they don't usually watch. Their spouse who finds an online wellness group while in their spiritual purpose seeking era. Their teenage kid, pushed out by their peer group, making friends and feeling validated online. Their 7-year-old who senses something's off at home. Plus, snippets of videos, social media, and reactions from different people online.
Timeline: November 15 – December 20. The 2010s or 2020s. Linear and Then & Now moments. 
🔥 Fuel: What happened to the main characters’ parents? How did they get that way? Why are others starting to behave similarly? How does this happen? Will our main characters survive? How much will politics play into who succumbs and who thrives?
📖 Cred: Speculative surrealism
 
Mood Reading Match-Up:
Cable news. Drool. Yoga Mama. Doom scrolling. Oiliness. DMs. Baby ghost. Anderson Cooper.
  • Being told a story, invisible in the room watching things unfold. Almost like the narrator jumps out of the story and speaks to the reader sometimes (third person).
  • Watching different generations of a family unravel
  • Fragmented, lyrical, ironic, nonsensical writing style
  • Chaotic, compromised, spiralling, and unhinged characters
  • White people gone wrong
  • Close calls, contagion, and conspiracy
  • Descent into madness, distorted reality fever dream
  • Grimdark and grotesque
  • Humans are the real horror
  • Fake news, toxic news cycle, possessed media
  • Psychological apocalyptic social mystery
  • Real world with a twist, ripped from the headlines quality
  • Unknown, undead menace, viral survival drama
 
Content Heads-Up: Acne (insecurity). Animal cruelty, death (dog). Body horror, gore, fluids. Cannibalism. Child death. Food horror. Homophobia (character opinions). Incest (attempted). Political commentary. Self-harm (psychosis/trance). Sexual content (lewd, orgy, with objects, mindless). Societal collapse. Transphobia (character comments, opinions). Violence, massacre, mass shootings. Vomit.
 
Rep: American. Haitian American (peripheral). Cis. Hetero. Bronze, pale, spray tanned, and tan skin tones.
 
📚 Format: Library Digital
 
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