Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman
If you’re an American, chances are you have opinions about this country’s cable news channels. Maybe you’re an avid viewer of CNN. Maybe your TV is perpetually set to the Fox News station. Maybe you avoid cable news channels completely. But have you ever wondered to yourself if our country is being brainwashed by cable news? What if that was literally what was happening and people all across the United States of America were being radicalized and mind-controlled by the media they consumed? It doesn’t seem that far off from reality, does it? Clay McLeod Chapman’s recently released book explores that reality and its horrifying consequences.
It all starts when Noah Fairchild travels from Brooklyn to his parents’ house in Richmond, Virginia, for a wellness check. He hasn’t heard from them and they aren’t answering their phone. Noah knows that his parents are addicted to watching a far-right cable news channel called “Fax.” But surely, even though the channel might be infuriatingly conservative, it couldn’t actually cause them any harm, right? When he arrives in Richmond, he sees the extent of the damage. Their home is a wreck, and his parents are complete zombies, seemingly physically unable to take their eyes off of the television screen. They don’t seem like themselves at all. And then Noah’s mother attacks him.
But the mind control goes far beyond the walls of Noah Fairchild’s family home. All over the country, people are falling prey to a dark, sinister mind-controlling demon. And it’s not just on the right-wing channels. It’s in social media apps. It’s on influencer’s Instagram posts. It’s in emails. It’s on message forums. Nearly every screen in America is sending the message out to people everywhere that it’s time to “Wake Up” and “Open Your Eyes.” It seems like Noah and his young nephew Marcus might be some of the only people not affected by these violent urges, but can they escape while all of America seems to be turning against itself?
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a deeply unsettling horror novel and, even though it’s still very early in 2025, I would guess that this is likely to be one of the most unforgettable reads of the whole year. It’s hard to read this and not consider its chilling connections to the state of the United States, the great divide between its citizens, and our uncertain future. Clay McLeod Chapman was not afraid to go to disturbing places with this horror novel, and I applaud him for shoving all of our faces so violently into reality.
