By Melissa Barbuzzi
Apples Never Fall is all about the Delany family, the parents, Stan and Joy, and their four children. After fifty years of marriage and all of their children leaving the nest, Stan and Joy decide to sell their tennis academy and start the golden years of their life. But things take a turn for the worse, and what Stan and Joy thought would be the best years of their life, quickly become the most miserable.
After an unexpected visitor shows up at their door, things seem to be turning back around. But suddenly Joy goes missing and the Delaney siblings face a hard dilemma: do they tell the police even though their father is the most obvious suspect?
I really enjoyed this book, but I’ll start by saying it was more of a mystery/family drama than a thriller. The plot was very fun to read and kept me engaged and questioning what was going to happen throughout. The mix of family drama and mystery was super entertaining which resulted in me not being able to put the book down!
The characters were all great. They were all described in such detail that they felt real, which helped tie everything together for me. The siblings also had a very raw dynamic that felt realistic, and I really enjoyed. I will say, though, that I did have a tough time remembering who each sibling was. They were all so different but also had so many similarities that it got confusing keeping track of all their details.
On to things I didn’t love about the book. I do think the ending was dragged out. The big “finale” happened and then there were still multiple chapters that didn’t add anything to the plot. There was also a chapter that unexpectedly was all about COVID, which felt completely out of place and like it was just thrown in at the last minute.
As mentioned earlier, I did go into this thinking it was going to be more of a thriller, which it was not at all. I’m not sure if this is a regular Liane Moriarty thing, or if Apples Never Fall just came off differently than expected. Nevertheless, I still really enjoyed the family drama/mystery and wasn’t overly upset that it was less thrilling than expected.
I haven’t read any of Liane Moriarty’s other books, but Apples Never Fall has motivated me to read more by her! There is such a huge buzz around her books and the TV adaptations of her books, so I will definitely be reading more by her soon. If you haven’t read Apples Never Fall yet, I recommend it!