Score: 4.25/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Henry Holt & Co, Libro.fm, and Macmillan Audio for gifting me review copies of Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty.

The Delaney family are a tennis family through and through, they live and breathe tennis, and always have. They love each other too...even if they sometimes want to kill each other. The kids are all grown up now and the parents are home on their own. Suddenly their mum goes missing. Things start to look bad for their dad, but there is also a mysterious stranger in the picture too. Is their past coming back to bite them or is something even more sinister afoot?

I loved the pacing of this book, where the author doles out little clues and pieces of the puzzle as you move between current day and past events. All the while, you learn more about each of the characters with each piece that is revealed.

It's hard to put this book squarely in one genre because to me it feels like Contemporary Fiction, Family Drama, and Mystery all rolled up. But I really enjoyed all of those elements coming together, and once I started I really couldn't put it down. There are themes of eating disorders, mental health, infidelity, relationship breakdown, emotional and physical abuse (adults and children), murder, and divorce in the story—just so you're aware going in.

All the little Australianisms and having the audio narrator being Australian really made this book extra special for me. I haven't been able to go home since 2018 and I'm feeling super homesick for people and places right now.

The audio is just over 18 hours, but it didn't feel that long to me, and I finished it off over two days. Caroline Lee performed the book and I could listen to her talk all day. She's also narrated most of Moriarty's other books if I'm not mistaken. Grab the audiobook here, or get a physical book via the button below.

Synopsis:

The Delaney family love one another dearly—it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other . . .

If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father?

This is the dilemma facing the four grown Delaney siblings.

The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it their chemistry is palpable. But after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?

The four Delaney children—Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke—were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups and there is the wonderful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted.

Later, when Joy goes missing, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent, two are not so sure—but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their biggest match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light.