This was worth reading just for the thought experiment of an absurd situation playing out, even if not all chapters worked as well as others.

I’m going to try to avoid all of the puns that have to do with cheese as much as possible here. Believe me, there are enough of them throughout this book! I wanted to read this because I was really game to give Scalzi another try after I liked Old Man’s War years ago, then didn’t love The Kaiju Preservation Society. I’m coming down on the side of quite liking this book, with some reservations.

But mostly I wanted to read it because this blurb starts like this:

“The moon has turned to cheese.
Now humanity has to deal with it.”

So, I mean, who can resist that? Not this reader.

That’s about it. The moon turns to actual cheese, or, as the space agencies insist on calling it, “an organic matrix.” I imagined Scalzi sitting around trying to think up a fun idea for his next novel and coming up with the most absurd thing, and this is a pretty good one.

There are some interesting through lines in the plot, characters that recur and drive the narrative, but some chapters serve as a mini-episode that never reappears, like a short vignette. On the whole, it works, but when writing this way, it's natural that some stories work better than others, and occasionally I found my eyes skimming the page a bit, particularly when the prose was dialogue heavy. The humour worked for me, because it's all about the cheese and I was so completely in for that that I didn’t mind if it was cheesy. He balanced it with some genuine poignancy.

It all starts out with a sense of bemusing fun, but cheese isn’t as stable in outer space as moon rock, so all sorts of terrible things start to happen.

There are so many good quotes, but I think this sums up much of the book nicely, in the words of the fictional American President Boone:

“I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that doesn’t fundamentally sound ridiculous.”

This novel sparked some fun dinnertime conversation and I’m glad I read it!

Thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for a gifted copy.

When the Moon Hits Your eye by John Scalzi
Ever since covid I find myself saying “well that would never happen” a lot less when reading books about things that probably would never happen. For example, the moon turning into a giant wheel of cheese. That would never happen….right? And people would have rational and appropriate reactions…right?
In this book, each chapter explores a different person and how the moon changing affected them and their life. For example, how did the moon changing to cheese impact the astronauts who were supposed to visit said moon? What about feuding cheese shop owners? This was an interesting exploration into the human condition and how we act when the unthinkable happens.
I was sort of expecting this to be a book that follows a cast of characters throughout this journey, but really only a few characters are actually in multiple chapters. This narrative allowed this story to be a wide view look at how different people from different backgrounds might react.
Overall, I liked this book. It’s going to be perfect for people who love a character-focused story line and are less concerned about plot development. I think I just went into this book expecting something different than what it was. But I still found this to be an enjoyable read. I recommend reading it by moonlight.
Than you to the publisher for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book followed a lunar phase and we had different points of view for every chapter. This was humorous and satirical and everything I didn't realize I needed in a book. I was laughing, snorting, rolling my eyes, and smiling. If you don't like a ton of POVs this isn't for you. I will say I have a new interest in the moon and will pay closer attention to it from now on.

Thank you Tor and John Scalzi for the gifted copy I got at NYCC!

When the Moon Hits Your Eye
John Scalzi
Publishing Date: March 25, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was my first book by John Scalzi and I had no idea what to expect going in. But I like what I found!

This book was pretty ridiculous 🤣 What would you do if one day the moon turned to cheese? How would you spend your time if you knew the world might come to an end in two years?

This book was random and silly and also made me feel things at points. Each chapter is a day in the lunar cycle and most of the chapters are from the POV of a different character. They almost read like short stories as most of the characters we don’t see again after their chapter.

The puns were cheesy, the plot was outlandish, the overall vibe was quirky. Throughout much of the book I found myself thinking, “I am really enjoying this and I have no idea why!” I’m still not entirely sure why this kooky book worked so well for me, but it hit right and I really had a good time reading it. I’ll definitely be back for more by this author!

If there is anyone who can take a ridiculous idea like the moon turning to cheese and make it into a book that was funny, absurd, silly, heartwarming and thought provoking it is John Scalzi. When the Moon Hits Your Eye is a collections of stories set in a world where the moon has turned to cheese and how various people across the United States deal with that in a ‘day in the life’ kind of fashion.

We start off the lunar month with the discovery the moon is wrong and made of cheese. Every chapter is a day focusing on a different set of characters and how they are coping with this new discovery. While there is a little talk of how this happened, that is not the focus of the story. It has more to do with how it impacts peoples lives and what they think of the phenomenon. Each chapter is a day in the lunar cycle leading up to a lunar eclispe.

I enjoyed how every chapter had a different focal PoV. From the NASA astronauts whose mission to the moon got scrapped, to a cheese shop with a long standing family feud, the guys down at the local diner, a writer who accidentally became famous due to the content of his just released book and so many others characters and how the moon changing has effected their lives. Each ‘a day in the life’ had something I enjoyed in it that added to the overall whole of the book.

Scalzi says in the afterword that this book finished up a group of stories that include The Kaiju Preservation Society and Starter Villain. You do not have to have read them to enjoy When the Moon Hits Your Eye, however they follow the same concept when he was writing them of “ordinary people dealing with an extraordinary high concept situation in a modern setting”.

I enjoyed this book so much more than I thought I would. The chapter stories with the various characters were fun. Billionaires fighting over who will be first to eat a piece of the moon, friends in a group chat talking about the eclipse party they can’t make it to, NASA explaining how the moon is now volatile with volcanoes of molten cheese and so on. Just a lot of great and fun stories, even a few emotional ones.

If you are a person that can live with some loosey-goosey science to have a good time this could be just what you were looking for.

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.