The Wake Up

**Readers' Favorite Book Award Winner for Supernatural Fiction (Bronze, 2020)**

What if you could see the angelic or demonic manifestations of people's characters in mirrors? And what if, in your world, this gift was fatal?

Since early childhood, Lexi has repressed a rare ability to See. For most of her life, and from most people who know her, this is a well-kept secret. Raised by a family of mirror-makers, glass-blowers, and wolves, Lexi trains herself to See selectively, plagued by her otherness. She comes of age when the nation's leader bans man-made reflective surfaces, plunging the nation into a dystopia where government agencies annihilate families like Lexi's and redraw the lines of normalcy, tradition, and trust.

As her family breaks apart, Lexi falls for a man whose secrets run even deeper than hers. Betrayal and deceit ignite dangerous consequences in a world of blurring realities. Caught up in a battle as old as time itself, the last mirror-maker must revamp a break up into the greatest wake up of her life, embracing her forbidden capabilities in an attempt to rouse her world from darkness.

THE WAKE UP is a modern-day parable about love, truth, and self-discovery. It examines how our choices determine the manner in which we live before we die, and how we stop fearing the monsters beneath the bed once we discover them within us.

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"Literature at its finest. Sharp, poetic, dark, with glimmers of light here and there..." -Deborah Kaminski, author of Damian’s Workshop

"Exceptionally well written with a rich style and leisurely pace suited toward adult readers ... its underlying commentary works equally well as a metaphor for the duality within the human heart ... [and] a metaphor for the painful process of self-discovery—growing up and growing deep." -Diana Peach, author of Catling’s Bane (The Rose Sheild, #1)

"A whirlwind of an interesting story … The prose is beautiful and poetic, sometimes so deep that I had to read it twice." -Misty Mount, author of The Shadow Girl

"Perfectly dark and brilliantly bleak ... Panayotopulos uses brilliantly and meticulously crafted descriptions throughout … [A] fantastic bit of satire that did a very good job at holding a mirror to the world around us." -Andrew Gracey, author of The Dust and the Dark Places

"Delightful ... A finely crafted allegory of the human condition and what is possible in spite of what we are. Good and Evil are ancient considerations for us humans and well-written books about such things are to be cherished ... The English language has not been better served." -Robert Brown, author of My First Ten Days in Heaven

"Luscious lines of descriptive prose, excellent writing, and a concept of a dystopian world that will send shivers up your spine." -Rose Gonsoulin, author of The Perfectly Good Lie