CJ Leede’s first novel, Maeve Fly, set off a series of seismic shocks in the online circles where I hang out, yet I haven’t managed to read it yet. I have no good excuses, except for the usual so many books, so little time. It’s been on my towering TBR pile for quite a while, and after reading American Rapture, Leede’s forthcoming second novel, I’m moving it way up the stack, because people, you are not ready for this one.

Sophie, the heart of American Rapture, is a teenage girl raised in a painfully repressive Catholic household, a place where paintings of Jesus and crosses hang on every wall, where guilt and sin, shame and repression, heaven and hell, are spoon fed to her on a daily basis. Separated from her twin brother, for the most part closed off from everything outside her home and church, the very insular world she inhabits, Sophie is sad, lonely, wracked with the feeling she’s not worthy of love.

That situation quickly unravels when a mutating virus that turns victims into sex-crazed zombies spreads like a wildfire across the the US, setting Sophie on a brutal, gut wrenching journey in search of her brother and safety. Sophie soon finds herself questioning everything she knows, and discovering everything she doesn’t know, as she fights for survival. Along the way she gathers a found family of sorts, a desperate group of fellow survivors, including the best fictional dog I’ve read in a long time.

I love a good found family story, and American Rapture does not disappoint in that regard. As the ragtag group traverses a midwest hellscape, I found myself cheering for their brief successes, and mourning their losses. Make no mistake, this is very much an apocalyptic novel—think The Road mixed with zombies, with a healthy, sinister dose of religious fundamentalism mixed in. It is harrowing and unsettling, filled with uncompromising violence.

Sophie is a wonderful heroine, brave and terrified, innocent and flawed. When she finds all the notions that have been drilled into her by her parents and her church—things like love, sex, virginity, a woman’s place, blind faith in God—challenged by the maelstrom she finds herself in, she allows herself to confront those challenges head on. All the characters, Sophie especially, are heartfelt creations. Leede writes with heartfelt empathy.

A lot of American Rapture hits uncomfortably close to home, given our current political/social climate. There were moments here when I found myself reading through tears. Tears for what the characters are experiencing, and tears of rage at how truly inhumane humans can be. This is visceral horror at its finest, horror that isn’t afraid to ask profound questions.

American Rapture releases October 15, 2024. Don’t miss this one.