ARC Review:

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

Publication Date: March 25, 2025

Summary from NetGalley:

The moon has turned into cheese.

Now humanity has to deal with it.

For some it’s an opportunity. For others it’s a moment to question their faith: In God, in science, in everything. Still others try to keep the world running in the face of absurdity and uncertainty. And then there are the billions looking to the sky and wondering how a thing that was always just there is now… something absolutely impossible.

Astronauts and billionaires, comedians and bank executives, professors and presidents, teenagers and terminal patients at the end of their lives — over the length of an entire lunar cycle, each get their moment in the moonlight. To panic, to plan, to wonder and to pray, to laugh and to grieve. All in a kaleidoscopic novel that goes all the places you’d expect, and then to so many places you wouldn’t.

It’s a wild moonage daydream. Ride this rocket.

ARC provided by Tor Publishing Via NetGalley for an honest review.

Confession:

I really enjoyed this book! It was funny, thought provoking, full of characters that were interesting, and had a very interesting premise. What would you do it the moon suddenly turned into a giant orb of cheese? This book takes a look at all of the ways people might react to something catastrophic in their lives and pokes a little bit of fun at people too.

The way this book is set up is very interesting. Each chapter captures a day in the life of someone after the moon has turned to cheese. And it is a very large range of people, from the astronaut who was hoping to go to the moon, to scientist and philosophers trying to explain what happened, a billionaire who just wants to eat a piece of the moon to just mundane ordinary people moving on with their lives. I loved every chapter, and found myself laughing out loud during some of them. Some of the people have more than one chapter, and a few of the more famous ones get mentioned in almost all of them, but it was fun to see how different people might react to this momentous change in the moon.

The writing is great and I loved all of the fun and witty dialogue, and even the cheesy puns. I really enjoyed the fact that even though we were getting peeks into different people’s lives, there was still the shared feeling of not knowing what the future held for the earth. Some of my favorite chapters were told from the point of views of the philosopher and his friends and the ones where the religious community was trying to figure out God’s plan, or possibly the devils. These chapters were the most thought provoking while still maintaining a sense of humor. The ending was not at all what I was expecting, but that was great too.

If you enjoy this author’s work this is a must read. If you are interested in stories that border on the absurd but still wrestle with the important questions of life while asking what if?, then this is a book you should consider reading.