“Hello wardies!” one member of the Provo Young Single Adults 9th Ward group wrote. “Many people against the Church have, sadly, written negative comments about the Book. … The challenge for us is to go to the amazon website and write a positive rating and review. … I personally found that my love and testimony for the Book of Mormon has increased tremendously as I wrote down my testimony as a review, and I know it will be the case for you as well.” The post helpfully provided instructions for creating an Amazon account (and recommended that students just borrow their parents’ accounts if they didn’t want to start their own.) And it established a deadline: “Please accomplish this challenge by the end of the week (3/6). Thank you for serving the Lord!”

And lo! The glowing critical appraisals poured in. One five-star review currently on display raves: “This book is true. It has the ability to help you find peace and happiness in this life. It is another testament of Jesus Christ.” Another said: “Best thing that ever happened to me was when I first read this book. I felt like everything in my life finally made sense.”

But when news of the church’s missionary work reached Reddit, a great anger rose in the hearts of the people. And they scattered single stars on the page of the budding lit-world darling. They wrote:

A trite, misogynistic, racist collection of demonstrably false stories written by a convicted con artist and peddled as Gospel truth by a masonic country club of ancient white men who gleefully scam their ovine followers out of time, money, and critical thinking skills while infusing the Utah State Government and Congressional Delegation with hyper-religious special interest puppets whose utter lack of spiritual value might be forgivable were it not for its complete dearth of literary merit.