Book Review: "Sex on the Moon" by Ben Mezrich

Genre: Fiction (Based on a True Story)

★★★★★

Photo credit: BN.com

Thad Roberts, a college student and co-op in a prestigious NASA program, had an idea—a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally.

Thad convinced her and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impenetrable laboratory at NASA—past security checkpoints, an electronically locked door with cipher security codes, and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: moon rocks from every Apollo landing.

Was Thad Roberts—undeniably gifted, picked for one of the most competitive scientific posts imaginable, a man who dreamed of being the first human to walk on Mars—really what he seemed? And what does one do with items so valuable they’re illegal even to own?

Enter Axel Emmerman, a quality control supervisor residing in Belgium who came across a most unusual email: I have in my possession a rare, multi-carat moon rock I am trying to find a buyer for. Like everyone else in the modern world, Axel received a fair amount of spam, but as an avid rock collector and charter board member of Antwerp’s Mineral Club, this email piqued his curiosity. Feeling there was a crime afoot, his sense of justice was aroused. He decided to investigate.

Based on meticulous research into thousands of pages of court records, FBI transcripts and documents, and scores of interviews with the people involved, including Thad Roberts, Mezrich—with his signature high-velocity swagger—has reconstructed the madcap story of genius, love, and duplicity all centered on a heist that reads like a Hollywood thrill ride. – Doubleday

I have mixed emotions about Sex on the Moon. While the title is somewhat misleading (there’s no literal sex on the moon), the heist it refers to doesn’t seem like much of a heist. It reads like a mind-game turned (potential and eventual) crime with a mastermind who’s clearly not much of a mastermind at all. It may seem harsh, but damn it, this protagonist pissed me off. A lot. Thad Roberts is intelligent, has a photographic memory and just about everything going for him. Then he blows it all for the love of a woman he’s only known for a month. While I am a romantic, and like to believe there is such a thing as love at first sight, I just don’t get his infatuation with Rebecca—the woman he decides to steal a piece of the moon for. Granted, he thinks about the money to be made from the theft, but he doesn’t consider the possibility of getting caught. I don’t think he took anything too seriously about his heist at all. The plan was thought out, but not thoroughly enough. His main focus after the successful completion of the heist is to keep Rebecca safe from harm and that in itself is just one of his problems. Concern for a woman who probably doesn’t love him nearly as much as he loves her and doing whatever he can for her with no guarantees leads to his demise. But that’s love for you.

With that being said, I like the book for what it is. Though the story pisses me off quite a bit, but the writing is solid enough to keep me intrigued. The prologue is the best part of the book. It holds the most suspense and that’s before you even know what’s going on. You go into the story knowing Thad has committed a great crime—stealing moon rocks from a highly secured area on the NASA compound—but you don’t know how he’s caught or the consequences of his being caught. One thing I can say is I want to know more about Thad. I mean, really, the guy has the world on a string and throws it all away for a mere $100,000. Moon rocks are supposedly worth millions (even billions) of dollars, and this douche bag blows his career at NASA, embarrasses and loses the respect of his peers and mentors, all for $100,000? Talk about being naïve! I don’t understand his thought process. How can someone so smart be so stupid? Oh, right… he’s in love.

What I don’t like about Sex on the Moon are the indiscrepancies. There is the possibility I may have misread some things, but I don’t think I did. One minute Mezrich writes about Thad’s photographic memory, and then the next Thad’s saying how he forgot someone’s name he read off a driver’s license. Hello! Photographic memory… did it just up and disappear? Doesn’t makes sense, does it?

I want to like this book more, but I can’t get over how annoyingly egotistical Thad is portrayed. I want to sympathize with his plight after getting caught, but he screwed up big time. I just can’t agree with Mezrich’s dramatic portrayal of this real life jackass and how he’s made out to be a victim. See, it all boils down to this: Thad comes from a Mormon background and is shunned by his family after having pre-marital sex (which garners a bit of sympathy), then excels at school and gets into a incredible co-op program at NASA, only to ruin it in one night. Thad’s story seems like something out of a movie and I think that’s what Mezrich wanted to put across. Does it help Thad’s case? No. And I can’t forget the guy who takes Thad’s email seriously enough to report him to the FBI. Dude needs to get a life. The heist and subsequent arrests could have been avoided had Axel Emmerman not responded to Thad’s initial inquiry for a buyer of precious moon rocks (but then there’d be no book). Without that slight derailment, Thad might have stuck with his plan to be the first man on Mars. At least there he couldn’t steal any moon rocks.

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Elle

Writer, mother, realist, cloud lover, daydreamer, dessert enthusiast, sweet tea addict, perfectionist, and lover of life and Christ, but not in that order. http://www.fanfiction.net/~vikingloverelle