I can’t believe I’m writing this about a Scalzi book, but I actually think this one is missable. Normally I applaud Scalzi’s ability to make his works political without sacrificing story or entertainment, but in this piece I think he perhaps bit off more than he could chew. A large cast of characters with little connective tissue only made things worse, causing a hilarious premise to collapse in on itself (not unlike the cheesy moon of this story).

If any reading are worried that my love affair with Scalzi has ended, don’t be. There are still MANY other works he’s penned which I LOVE and am hoping to revisit. Supposedly his next book “. . . takes place in space and will have aliens and spaceships in it”. I'm greatly looking forward to it.

Please check out my full review on my blog at: https://alligatorsandaneurysms.wordpress.com/2025/03/25/scalzis-wit-finally-curdles-slightly-a-review-of-when-the-moon-hits-your-eye/

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi is a weird book. Each chapter takes place over the course of a day and follows various people. In it, the moon has turned into cheese, and we see the ways people are reacting to this. That’s it. That’s pretty much the story. It is told with the usual wit we see from Scalzi. I laughed at parts. This book strangely takes itself seriously while poking fun. It’s not a bad read. I didn’t love the ending, as I would have liked it to have stuck with the dark road it was on. I am not really sure what the point of the story was, unless you are someone who has a burning need to see how it may play out if the moon suddenly became cheese. 3/5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for allowing me access to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Publication date March 25th, 2025. This review will be found on Instagram, StoryGraph, and Goodreads indefinitely.

I've been a fan of this entire not really related trilogy and When the Moon Hits Your Eye is no different. Like the others in this series, this novel is lighthearted and funny while dealing with current events. The characters are a bit flat, in a caricature way, but doesn't really affect the enjoyment of the ridiculous story with quick wit. I love getting to see some of the most annoying parts of the world from a point of view that makes it easier to tolerate.

That said, I think this is the weakest narrative of the three. Each chapter features new characters, and while there's enough connection to get satisfying arcs, it doesn't quite feel like a complete story at the end. It's inventive and amusing, but I didn't really get to connect with it enough to feel invested. I wish more of my favorite characters would have made a reappearance and gotten some closure.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for providing this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was entertaining.

Scalzi takes an improbable idea - the moon turning into cheese - and creates a fast paced tale you almost believe could happen.The story unfolds through the eyes of a variety of people, from the President of the United States to a group of guys who meet for breakfast in a small town diner and everyone in between. With the author's unique humor and wit, he explores people's reaction to the crisis and in the process offers an insight into human nature.

This is not a book to worry about if the science is possible, it's one to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Thank you to NetGalley, John Scalzi and Tor Books for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

I was a fan of John Scalzi immediately when I read Starter Villain so I was very excited to be granted access to this book. The premise of the book was so intriguing. I mean, the moon turns to cheese. Cheese! I’m interested.

I was so curious about what would happen and where Scalzi would take us. This was a pretty big story to pull off. The story is told through vignettes of different character POVs and news headlines each day starting with the day the moon turned into cheese. So it’s almost like a series of short stories told in chronological order with an overall background story arc through the timeline of events happening with the moon. One day we follow a woman who is a movie studio executive as she meets with different people who are all pitching their movie ideas….and of course they’re all related to cheese. We get some incredible cheesy puns in this chapter. Another day we follow a young woman who just got a job at a cheese shop that is competing against their rival cheese shop across town. There were things that I liked about each POV and it was cool to see a wide variety of people with different locations/professions/backgrounds/ages respond to this huge global event. Because it’s John Scalzi, it’s of course told with some humor and absurdity.

If you like this narrative style, then I think you could really like this book. I’ve found that the composite novel format is not my favorite. It's an interesting way to tell the story, but it didn’t really work for me. It made it hard for me to feel invested in the flow of the story and it felt a little choppy. Do I need to remember these characters? Are they going to come back into the story later? The result was that I didn't care very much about the individual characters because I didn't know whether they were going to come back into the story later or if their details were relevant to the events at all. I only wanted to follow the overall plot of what's happening with the moon and how this issue is going to be resolved.

Thank you to TOR books for the gift digital ARC of this book. This is my honest review.

I expected this book to be offbeat and entertaining. But John Scalzi took it in a completely different direction than I expected. The reader knows the premise, based on the title and back cover blurb. "What would happen if the moon suddenly and without explanation turned into cheese." But what the author does with that premise caught me off guard. The moon turning into cheese is the both the inciting incident and the only required suspension of disbelief. Everything else follows logically and as true to the real world as possible.

The mass of the moon stays the same. No orbital mechanics are (supposedly) skewed. Other natural processes must and do proceed apace: it's larger in diameter, it's brighter, the surface is too soft for a landing, etc. The book delves into the effect the change has on the population of Earth. Chapters focus on different sets of characters and their unique situations in a somewhat chronological order. Some incidents are humorous. Others not so much. A few characters pop up more than once so we get a fuller picture how the new moon's ramifications on their life. And then something happens to which my response was "he didn't actually go there, did he?" But he did. And it makes for an even more interesting story.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye takes us through the first month of absolute chaos after the moon turns to cheese. Each day, we jump into a new POV, from astronauts to billionaires to small-town cheese shop owners to a pastor. Given that this is John Scalzi, and especially after reading The Kaiju Preservation Society, I was expecting way more humor. His recent books have leaned into the ridiculous, humor side of sci-fi, and with the premise and cover, I assumed this one would follow suit.

But… it didn’t. And I honestly couldn’t tell if Scalzi was aiming for humor and missed the mark or if that wasn’t his goal at all. Either way, the book wasn’t bad, it just felt kind of meh. A lot of the POVs didn’t really hook me, and I definitely didn’t need to spend time inside the head of yet another billionaire with a space company. On the flip side, I loved the feuding cheese shop owner brothers and their employees-turned-lovers, that storyline was easily my favorite.

Overall, I found myself constantly putting this book down and not feeling any urge to pick it back up. It had some good moments, but for the most part, it was just… there.

For the most part, the story takes place each day of the lunar cycle—chapters are titled Day One through Day Thirty, with a few assorted future days at the end.

There's a lot of wordplay, humor ranging from light chuckles to full-blown hilarity, satire, political and social commentary, pop culture, and even a few philosophical moments.

Among the notable characters are scientists; a president who doesn't read security briefings; a billionaire with pet Congresspeople; a female astronaut who wishes she had become a firefighter instead (and other astronauts); three retired men from different backgrounds who hang out together at a diner (they also interact with a server and a reporter over the course of the book); a pastor and his church community; movie script writers and executives; a group of nerdy highschoolers; feuding brothers who own competing cheese stores in the Wisconsin capitol (Fromagery and DemocraCheese), along with their wives and college-student employees; and an author. I especially liked the beginning of the Annette (Fromagery employee) and Felix (DemocraCheese employee) storyline. Don't skip the Afterword.

This was great vacation reading: I started the book on a flight and continued enjoying it poolside. This definitely isn't my favorite Scalzi work, but I was engrossed and did annotate heavily while I was reading, so I bumped up the rating a bit. Too, I find myself anxious for publication, when I'll be free to share specific parts with certain people and to discuss it generally with even more people. I will likely read it again in the near future, with my ears.

3.5 stars. This is the second book I have read by John Scalzi. My first, Starter Villain, was such a awesome read that I had high expectations for this one. The premise is a far-out though fun one; what would you do if the moon turned to cheese? Lunar samples as well as the moon itself, simply turn to cheese one day. What kind? We never learn!!

I love Scalzi's humor but didn't see as much of that in this book. While there, a lot of the stories leaned a bit more serious, especially near the end. I did appreciate the rich billionaire character who invests in the space program (hmmmm) and his storyline. I also liked the way the novel chose to end.

I think the problem that I had with this novel is that I'm not a short story reader. While there a was thread going from chapter to chapter, it felt like a series of short stories. I found the individual vignettes enjoyable just not enough to keep me running back to the book. Still a great read with some good and humorous insights into human behavior.

What would you do if the Moon, without warning, turned to cheese? Follow the random, hilarious conundrum from a myriad of perspectives. From the President of the United States to a group of friends who meet regularly at a diner for coffee, you'll see how this potentially life altering event is met with a mélange of emotions.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye was very fun. I cycled through laughing out loud, grinning like a goon, and tearing up. Scalzi has a wonderful way of conjuring wild scenarios and then writing uniquely human experiences. Each perspective felt real and different. It was like reading a different short story each chapter that interacted and related to the same topic in unknowable ways. Which probably makes no sense. Just pick up the book.

This is a fairly light & quick read. If you're looking for something quirky, don't hesitate to consider When the Moon Hits Your Eye!

I have fallen in love with the humor and writing of John Scalzi. His ideas and concepts are so wonky and out there, his books are a total palate cleanser between harder/deeper reads.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye starts off with a bang all about how suddenly overnight the actual moon has turned to cheese. We then follow a variety of different groups/people and see how they are processing this change. Full of humor and wit, this makes for a crazy and fun read. That said, I didn't feel connected to the characters are really the plot overall. There was so much switching around within the POV's that it was a bit distracting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Books for the gifted e-arc of this book.

Funny and weird and charming. It's nice to find a sff book that's not aggressively focused on setting up lore or a sequel. You do have to have an ability to switch between a few narrative styles, and some of those characters will feel a little "trendy" or "too on the nose" for some readers.

When the Moon Hits Your Eyes by John Scalzi
Genre: sci-fi comedy
Pub date: March 25, 2025

From the New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain comes an entirely serious take on a distinctly unserious subject: what would really happen if suddenly the moon were replaced by a giant wheel of cheese. It's a whole new moooooon.

I experienced this book in waves. In some chapters, I felt deeply invested in the bizarreness and ridiculousness of the situations, while other chapters could easily have been omitted without any loss.

The book has one main storyline: the end of life on Earth. However, the narrative is told through a collection of different individual’s perspectives, making it feel like a compilation of short stories.

This book attempts to reflect the current state of society and explores how people might respond in a crazy scenario.

Give this book a try if you like:
🧀End of the world trope
🧀Quirky books
🧀Absurd scenarios

John Scalzi's new book, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, is a farce of a story.

"The moon (and all of the moon rocks on earth) has unexpectedly turned to cheese. Or as NASA calls it - an organic matrix. What?!? And now a piece has split off and is headed to Earth possibly to end all life as we know it. Now what?"

Scalzi writes a ridiculous sounding scenario - puts lots of different people in it - and by the end you're thinking "That could happen!" There's a billionaire who thinks he smart but makes some horrible decisions. Lots of characters having to decide what to do at the end of the world.
There's some interesting commentary about publishing and agents - not sure how much personal experience from Scalzi went into that.

A good change-of-pace story with a couple of unexpected nuggets.

What would happen if the moon turned to cheese? This book explores that - not in a scientific or technical way, but instead, in a human way. Each chapter follows a different person across the U.S. each day for the lunar cycle. From a museum director to a tech millionaire to an aspiring author, we see how they all navigate this new reality.

It took me a while to connect to the story, since I had no time to connect to any character. If a character we had previously read about showed up, it took me a while to remember who they were. Eventually, as the book went on, some stories intertwined and made everything feel more complete.

I enjoyed that this was a more “quiet” type of sci-fi rather than a “save the world” sci-fi.

This was great! Scalzi’s writing is always hilarious and this is no exception. I also absolutely adored the structure of this. It’s all interconnected vignettes centered around a major event, so that you see what’s going on from many different perspectives. Some characters are referenced multiple times, but each chapter feels different from one another, which keeps the story fresh. I was completely transfixed by how the story was told and how it all unfolded. The only reason this wasn’t 5 stars is I didn’t love how the ending came together - it fizzled a bit for me, but I also got what the author was going for I think. All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this one!

Thank you to Tor Books and Netgalley for this ARC. When the Moon Hits Your Eye comes out 3/25!

4.5/5

I had an absolute riot of a time! I loved Kaiju and it was the only other Scalzi I have read before this so I'm happy to find he's not a one-hit wonder for me. I've got many of his other works on my TBR just haven't gotten to them yet.

What I loved about this was not only the absurd concept that the moon would turn to cheese but seeing so many different perspectives from people and their reaction to the moon turning to cheese and how events unfold. It literally had me having my own little existential crisis wondering what I would do in their shoes and what I'm doing with my life right now, etc, so thanks for that Scalzi. I do wish we could have stayed with a few characters longer than we did but since this book isn't about any one person and instead about the collective experience, it's unnecessary but I can at least let those characters live more in my head. I will say, the Lessa Sarah story GOT ME GOOD. That one was so close to home it was scary with the emotions and struggles she went through.

Overall, this is excellent and I wish it was five times longer so it wouldn't be over so fast.

John Scalzi is my go-to for laugh out loud sci-fi reads. In When the Moon Hits Your Eye, John Scazli asks, "What if our moon were turned into cheese?" What follows is a series of vignettes from a wide variety of perspectives - from billionaires to cheesemongers to scientists. I thoroughly enjoyed this "what-if" scenario that is ridiculous, disastrous, and spot-on satire, a perfect reflection of our modern era.

Scalzi brings his trademark humor in a new wild novel that asks, "What if the Moon suddenly turned into cheese?" The narrative is told through many different perspectives as each chapter shows a new character(s) dealing with this new cheesy moon. Thus you get some characters that are more compelling than others. While I didn't care for the Elon Musk adjacent character, there are characters that I would've loved to spend more time with. Fans of Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain should find plenty to enjoy with this newest novel.

Thank you @torbooks for the complimentary ARC. ♡

🧀 One-sentence summary: What would humanity do if the moon turned into a stinky ball of cheese?

𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍 𝚒𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎:
▶︎ 𝗟𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘁𝘀
▶︎ 𝗣𝘂𝗻𝗻𝘆 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗼𝗿
▶︎ 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗸𝘆 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀
▶︎ 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗺𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝘀𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗼𝘀

Because the book is told through a series of personal vignettes, it can feel disjointed, lacking a clear unifying plot to tie the curds together. There is a ton of cheesy humor and some witty dialogue.

Each chapter follows a day in the lunar cycle. Some chapters had me roaring with laughter, whilst others I felt could have been cut and still been Gouda!

Although there are high stakes (the end of life on Earth), this is a series of individual character studies rather than a hunt to solve the existential threat to humanity. I alternated between enjoying the ride and wanting it to be over already.

Will I read more from Scalzi? Absolutely. He is one of Mr. Brewdy Reader’s favorite authors.

🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘 Final verdict: for an outlandish premise, this was oddly entertaining.

Give it a try if you are into absurd concepts and dad jokes.