Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

#145 Liane Moriarty has a new fan, and it's me.

It happened all the time: Talented kids turned into ordinary grown-ups. Butterflies became moths.

Hello, Readers —

Liane Moriarty has a new fan, and it’s me!

I was wrong about her and judged her books and her readers incorrectly. I thought the titles were too tantalizing (The Husband’s Secret, Truly Madly Guilty) to be taken seriously. From what I had seen of Big Little Lies on HBO, I assumed she was merely going for shock value via stories of trauma and domestic violence. I put her in the Colleen Hoover bucket and that wasn’t fair.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book and I think you might be too. I enjoyed the mystery, the family drama, and what it has to say about relationships and parenting.

I gave it 5 stars not because it’s the best book I’ve ever read, but because it was a highly satisfying experience. It was smart and insightful and easy to recommend. I listened to the audiobook and Caroline Lee was flawless in her narration and enhanced the overall experience.

The four apples on the tennis net is great design. Layers!!

The Mystery

The Delaney’s are a tennis family in Sydney. Stan and Joy Delaney have recently retired from running a popular tennis academy. They have four grown children who were all tennis stars in their youth with tons of potential, but none of them made it big.

One night, a young woman named Savannah shows up at their house with a large cut over her eye. She’s a stranger to Stan and Joy and says her boyfriend hit her. They take her in and Joy slides easily into the nurturing mother role. Savannah stays one night, then another. Then another. Joy is loving and trusting, but her kids start to get suspicious.

Then Joy disappears and Savannah is nowhere to be found. Now the kids are really suspicious, and eyes start turning to Stan. Did he play a role in her disappearance?

The chapters alternate between before the disappearance and after the disappearance. The plot is twisty with clever reveals and well-paced doling out of new information. Moriarty is dealing with serious subject matter but balances it well with moments of levity. I wanted to know the ending, but I was enjoying the journey.

The Family Drama

The Delaney’s are not completely dysfunctional, but they have plenty of baggage and drama. Each Delaney child has issues to work through and knots to untie. They’ve made mistakes, some small, some big, some huge. Moriarty has a way of endearing them to you in spite of their flaws. There’s a deft touch at the generational challenges that arise in a family and what gets passed down.

I love sports, sports stories, and tennis, so I enjoyed the bits of “tennis as an analogy for life.” There are excellent scenes of dialogue, in particular an unforgettable dinner scene where Stan dresses down each child on why they didn’t make it in tennis. As Danny Rojas says: “Harsh, but fair.”

Relationships and Parenting

I really love what this book has to say about being married and raising kids. Marriage is tough. Parenting is tough. We screw up all the time. There’s a lot of wisdom about relationships and parenting and being parented. It made me laugh and it made me tear up. A fictional disappearing woman mystery is doing so much!

Moriarty touches on long nights with young children:

When she thought of that long night, it was like remembering an extraordinarily tough match where she’d prevailed. Except there was no trophy or applause. The only recognition you got for surviving a night like that came from other mothers. Only they understood the epic nature of your trivial achievements.

She hints at regret we could feel when kids aren’t little anymore:

When she looked at photos of her children when they were little, she sometimes thought, Did I notice how beautiful they were? Was I actually there? Did I just skim the surface of my entire damned life?

And she shares wisdom on watching your children make their own decisions:

There was nothing Joy could do to change the outcome of her children’s lives, any more than she could’ve changed the outcome of their matches, no matter how hard she bit her lip…or how much Stan muttered instructions they couldn’t hear. Sometimes their children would do everything exactly as they taught them and sometimes they would do all the things they’d told them not to do and seeing them suffer the tiniest disappointments would be more painful than their own most significant losses. But then other times they would do something so extraordinary, so unexpected and beautiful, so entirely of their own choice and their own making, it was like a splash of icy water on a hot day. Those were the glorious moments.

I’ll for sure be reading more Moriarty! I haven’t watched the show yet (it is streaming now on Peacock) but when I do I plan to be back to discuss its merits.

Thanks for reading,

Kyle