Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

A Barnes & Noble Best Horror Book of 2025 (So Far)
A Vulture Best Book of 2025 (So Far)
A Goodreads Readers’ Most Anticipated Horror Novel of 2025
A CrimeReads Horror Novel to Look Out For in 2025
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Book of 2025
A Vulture Best Book of 2025 (So Far)
A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2025
A Paste Magazine Most Anticipated Horror Book of 2025

“If talking politics with family has become a horror show, this book’s for you.”—New York Times Book Review

“Part satire, part social commentary, part macabre, this visceral, thought-provoking novel is not just horror but a wake-up call.”—Josh Sippie, B&N Reads

“Readers may think they know where the book is heading, but Chapman offers more surprises as he ventures further into the apocalypse. There is some of Chapman’s signature humor present, but this work is his most terrifying yet.”—Lila Denning, Library Journal, starred review

“Chapman spins established possession and zombie tropes into an original tale that will hijack readers’ nervous systems. . . . A compelling, cinematic, visceral, and disturbing tale.”—Booklist, starred review

“Clay McLeod Chapman is one of my favorite horror storytellers working today.”—Jordan Peele

“The most ambitious novel yet from a writer quietly redefining the emotional contours of contemporary horror.”—Neil McRobert, Vulture

“[Wake Up and Open Your Eyes] is likely to be one of the most unforgettable reads of the whole year”—Emily Martin, Book Riot

“Wake Up and Open Your Eyes shows the author’s most politically engaged, savage side, and for those of us who are fans of his work, the novel is a welcome addition to his oeuvre and proof that when it comes to changing things around, McLeod is horror fiction’s David Bowie.”—Gabino Iglesias, Locus magazine

“A damn roller coaster of a novel, the kind that leaves you shaking and shrieking and smiling. [Chapman] takes all that’s troubling our nation in the current day and, somehow, makes it all the more frightening.”—Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women

“The proximity of Chapman’s demons is enough to make one lock the doors, turn off the television, [and] curl into a ball in the dark. . . . A sparkling variety of narration, mad vivid energy, and even brilliantly funny bits.”—Josh Malerman, New York Times best-selling author of Incidents Around the House

“The Purge ain’t got nothin’ on this.”—Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times best-selling author of I Was a Teenage Slasher

“With Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Chapman isn’t merely checking the pulse of America—he’s tapping the vein. And trust me, there’s blood everywhere. This book throbs with body horror and familial conflict and, most notably, the sociopolitical nightmare we find ourselves in.”—Chuck Wendig, best-selling author of The Book of Accidents and Black River Orchard

“Surreal, hypnotic, unrelenting, profoundly claustrophobic, and an absolutely scathing sendup of the pitfalls of American divisiveness.”—Keith Rosson, author of Fever House

“A profoundly terrifying, riveting, intense, nerve-shredding modern horror epic. This is Clay McLeod Chapman at the peak of his craft. Brilliant.”—Rachel Harrison, USA Today best-selling author of So Thirsty and Black Sheep

“Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is supercharged, gloriously maximalist, terrifying, and disgusting. But mostly it’s tragic, and hits much closer to home than any of us want it to.”—C. J. Leede, author of Maeve Fly and American Rapture

“A searing and deeply unnerving apocalyptic thriller executed with the true nerve of a master storyteller.”—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“This novel is relentless and utterly merciless. Chapman takes unflinching aim at modern American culture and nobody is safe in this brutal, insightful apocalypse!”—Christopher Golden, New York Times best-selling author of Road of Bones and The House of Last Resort

“Fabulously unhinged, this book is a hilarious and terrifying jamboree of modern-day horrors. Gory, chilling, and exhilarating, the book knows to relish its delicious madness. I haven’t had such a thrill in ages!”—Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio

“Gut-wrenching, grief-soaked, the book perfectly embodies the panic of seeing the people you love transform into monsters. An utterly disconcerting mirror held up to the terror of our present.”—Cassandra Khaw, best-selling author of Nothing But Blackened Teeth

“A harrowing horror experience. Like watching through a window as the world explodes, realizing too late you should have sought shelter.”—Johnny Compton, author of The Spite House and Devils Kill Devils

“Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a fever-pitched maelstrom of modern-day anxieties and terrors.”—Nat Cassidy, author of Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Nestlings

“Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a pedal-to-the-metal, body horror mash-up of The Purge, Pontypool, and Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up. Chapman has an absolute gift for the unforgettably, mind-saturatingly horrific, and I shall be sending him my therapy bill.”—Ally Wilkes, Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of All the White Spaces and Where the Dead Wait

“Wake Up and Open Your Eyes doesn’t just hit close to home—it’s a needle sliding under your skin until you bleed, a rabbit hole stocked with terror all the way down.”—Christina Henry, author of Alice and The House That Horror Built

“A modern American classic. Clay McLeod Chapman’s panic-inducing, adrenaline-fueled epic digs its fingers into the cracks in twenty-first-century life and pries them open to expose the rot beneath.”—Josh Winning, author of Heads Will Roll

“An eye-opening sociopolitical fever nightmare that you won’t soon forget.”—Ai Jiang, Hugo Award nominee and author of Linghun

“Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is the scariest book I have read in years. It’s a book for our times and I can’t stop thinking about it.”—V. Castro, Bram Stoker Award nominee and author of The Haunting of Alejandra

“This is social horror at its most compelling.”—Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Vanishing Daughters