This was an ok book. It wasn't what I was expecting. It was more about Lori and Chad and not about Tylee or Jj.

I was looking forward to reading this because this case has both fascinated and horrified me. The book was really more about the following though than the actual case itself. I just was not overly impressed and it wasn’t what I was expecting and hoping for.

This was one of the most heart breaking cases> I learned new things about this case from this book. Leah did an excellent job telling the story as well as giving the reader everything they need to know! I wish this book was out before I did this case on my podcast!

Great Job Leah!

I was so looking forward to reading this and was thrilled when I won a copy on netgalley, BUT it went wayyyy too deep into the history of the LDS church and other things. I was really only interested in the case of Lori and Chad and their crimes, but the book went down the rabbit hole of LDS. I skipped a lot of the "fluff" that was in the book. It could have been half it's length had it stuck to the topic. #whenthemoonturnstoblood #netgalley

I was really looking forward to this story as a person who vaguely kept up with it. I was not a person who was vehemently following along, but I had read a few headlines and articles here and there so this book was something I was excited to get more information from. Overall, the book was interesting and okay. The author seemed to not have enough of a story and added a lot of “fluff” that I eventually started to skim over and just skip at times. I felt there were too long of explanations of other crimes, the Mormon church, etc. I do understand the need to explain these to get the full story, but I felt it pulled from the actual story of Lori and Chad Daybell. The author did have a great writing style.

This book was okay. I think it should be marketed differently though. It went too off tangent into the history of LDS extremists. It was less of a book about the actual crimes commuted and more about the culture that caused them. It was still very interesting just not what I thought. I probably wouldn't have picked this book up though had I known. It was also way too long and it felt like a lot of the chapters said the same things.

Wow was this a tough read. Don’t get me wrong, it was well written but the story is tragic! I saw this in the news but gained so much more information from this book. As a parent, I cannot imagine doing something like that to my kiddo. I recommend this to all of my true crime readers!

This is a really sad book, so much could have been avoided if people who had spoken up had been listened to, but it's really hard to be that voice of reason that goes against what everyone else wants to believe. You have no doubt heard about Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow (or Daybell I suppose), two people who are accused of killing Lori's husband and two children, JJ and Tylee, Chad's wife is also a potential victim though that is still to be determined. Much of the story covers the background of both Chad and Lori, Lori grew up in southern California with parents that are probably still fighting the IRS over back taxes (they say they don't have to pay taxes) and a few siblings. Lori married young, and divorced while still young, she's an attractive lady, blonde, blue eyed, tall and slim, she had no trouble finding another husband (she eventually marries 5 times). Chad on the other hand is while not unattractive, it's hard to find what Lori saw in him, portly and very mild in nature they appear to be opposites, maybe that was the attraction. There is also a lot on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) and various fringe groups that form when those groups disagree with the mainstream Church. Chad fell into this group, he was an author of a number of books, a few of which the Church felt were too violent, Chad started his own publishing company with his wife so he could publish his and any books he felt needed to be. Which is how Lori and he met, he was selling his books at a meeting and she had read some of them and was in awe of his talent. I think Lori wanted to like him from the get go and was willing to believe anything he said, even talk of zombie (light or dark people, which meant they were either good or bad), not surprising, Lori's husband and children fell under into the dark group and had to be dealt with. This was a very enlightening story, having read another book on this subject, I found this one much more detailed, though at times I felt the details dragged the flow down, still I would recommend it if you like true crime type stories. Thanks to #Netgalley and Twelve Books for the ARC.

I've had some time after reading this to think about it and this book wasn't as good as I'd originally thought. The only reason though is because nothing has happened with the car yet so this entire book is just explaining the Mormon church and what little we know about what happened to the kids, which is next to nothing. The author, Leah Sottile, did a great job of drawing you into the story and making you care about the people involved, if you didn't already. Overall, it's worth it to read this if you want to know how someone could go from mainstream Mormonism to murder in the name of God, or if you just want to know about the fringes of the Mormon church but that's the vast majority of what the book covers.

An intriguing look at the intersection between religion and madness, and how it brought about a terrible tragedy.

When the Moon Turns to Blood is the investigative story of what happened to JJ Vallow and Tylee Ryan and the contributing factors and social context leading up to them being reported missing and the subsequent discovery of their bodies.

I have to say that the research done for this book was impeccable and very in depth. I understand that this case is still ongoing and there are still questions that haven't been answered. I remember watching this case unfold on the news while staying home during the pandemic. What we didn't hear on the news was the back story and years of unhealthy interactions and red flags that were present in their lives with their mother. I didn't realize how much religion and fanaticism played a part in what happened to these kids. Religion isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong, but fanaticism can be a slippery slope. I found Lori and Chad's mindset and beliefs very interesting. Doomsday beliefs and "prepping" seem to be becoming more mainstream and more in the public conscience, especially with the pandemic still ongoing and the looming threat of another one. This is definitely an interesting case, and I would recommend anyone who is interested in true crime to dive in.

Thank you to NetGalley and Twelve Books for providing me a digital copy for review, The opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of the author or publisher.

Wow, just wow. I don't think I was mentally prepared for this as I just welcomed a baby in early April but I couldn't put it down. I needed to know what happened. Well done by the author.

In the parlance of Psychiatry, the technical term for the disorder afflicting Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell is "batshit crazy". I'm not a psychologist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. After reading When the Moon Turns to Blood, I'm still not sure if these two are legitimately mentally ill or if they're just grifters. Honestly, it might be both. Both (and especially Chad) behave like grifters, preying on damaged, insecure people and making them believe that they are somehow special. I'm also not 100% if Lori was conned by Chad or the other way around. Both of them are charismatic and have a deep knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints which enabled them to fool a lot of people into believing their craziness. The problem with these type of people is that they start to believe their own rhetoric, and they always get caught because people start turning up dead. It's even sadder when they end up killing their own children and involving them in their twisted games like these two.

The major flaw in this book is that the trials for both Chad and Lori are forthcoming so much of the detail often revealed in these types of cases is still sealed or yet to be provided through testimony. Leah Sottile probably should have waited for the trials to finish before publishing, but I guess this way she has a follow-up to write somewhere down the line. If nothing else, this book is a pretty great reference point but there are a lot of questions still left unanswered. Why did they kill the children? Did they kill the children? When the Moon Turns to Blood presents a lot of damning evidence against Chad and Lori, but a lot of it is circumstantial. I'm sure a lot more will come out in court, but again, that isn't expected to even start until 2023. If there was more complete information, I probably would have given this book 4 or 5 stars instead of 3.

Sottile is a good writer and there is a lot of information here. I've heard some complaints that there was "too much information", but that's what a book is. There is a lot of back story and information on the LDS church, but it's actually necessary for the reader to understand the larger context of what Lori and Chad Daybell have done. If you don't want all of that info, you don't want a book, you want a Wikipedia article, You can't really get where all of these people are coming from unless you have the background of their beliefs. The LDS church is probably going to get a lot of the backlash from all of this, but that's really not fair. There are evil people in every religion and every church. Somebody probably should have noticed the amount of crazy coming out of Chad and Lori before the kids died and done something, but these days there's so much of this stuff, who can really police it? This type of thing is really more of an indictment of human beings than of religion or a particular church.

I would recommend this book if you've seen the story on the news and want to learn more. Or, maybe you're like me and had never heard about it, but like reading about nutty people and the nutty things they do. It's well written and full of information. I'll definitely be following the trial after reading When the Moon Turns to Blood. A very big THANK YOU to Netgalley and Twelve Books for providing me with an ARC of the book.

This whole case is so messed up and heartbreaking. This book goes into a lot of details regarding LDS and the extreme religious beliefs that Lori and Chad held. If you aren’t interested in learning about LDS at all, there will be moments that drag out/might b hard for you to stay interested, but understanding how extreme and cult like these beliefs are are important to what happened and what they did. *I want to stress that I understand that Lori and Chad are extremists and that their beliefs don’t reflect all LDS members, so don’t come at me* As someone who loves both true crime and learning about “cult-like religions” and cults in general, I enjoyed this book!

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. What a wild ride! Sottile dives into this convoluted, hot mess of a situation and somehow extracts the facts to illustrate the story of a family ruined by religious zealotry.

I am very interested in this case and was hoping this book would detail timelines and focus on the situation while supplying pertinent information.

Well, I got lots of details, unfortunately, these details actually managed to ruin the story. This author was all over the place with this book and supplied a bunch of useless info.


Unlike other people who have reviewed this book, I thought there was wayyyyy too much info on the Mormons and the LDS. After which, the author felt the need to spend several pages detailing other women who have killed. Ugh!

I lost it when the opening line in one of the chapters was "In the 16th century". I just wanted to say "who cares about the 16th century?"

After that, I gave up and did not finish the mess that is this book.

It's pretty hard to turn this true crime story into a boring one, but this author managed to do just that.

Filled with quoted conversations and indisputable facts, When the Moon Turns to Blood organizes the Lori Vallow/Chad Daybell case in a linear and chronological fashion that is much easier to follow than the various news stories. As someone who followed the case closely, I knew much of the information contained, but appreciated the author’s ability to present context and history to bring some clarity to this chaotic storyline.

This is a truly gripping read, especially since I didn't quite know how much Mormonism and the Church of the Latter Day Saints ideology was involved in Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow's horrific murder of her two children, Taylee and JJ. Once you learn about the history of Mormonism and the role it played in Chad and Lori's lives and motivations, the story becomes much more fleshed out and ultimately devastating because it's not just a story, it's real life. Leah Sottile is an excellent writer, she really placing the reader in the story--it's definitely not a dry, studious, heartless description of events like some other true crime books can be.

Thank you to NetGalley and Twelve Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I previously read The Doomsday Mother which is another book on this same subject but I actually enjoyed this one more. This version really gets into the Mormon Church and the impact that it played in the minds of Chad and Lori. I would have rated it five stars, however, there is a bit of repetition and the timeline skips around which can be a little confusing. Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publishers for an e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion.