A very cleverly written, character-based story involving a recently retired mother who goes missing after sending incomprehensible text messages to her four adult children.

The storyline moves between the current investigation, which becomes more and more concerning, and a few months earlier when we learn about events leading up to the disappearance. The author leaves us guessing until the last moment.

I found this compulsive reading and could barely put it down. Highly recommended.

Longer review here: https://suesbookreviews.blogspot.com/2024/04/apples-never-fall-liane-moriarty.ht... ( )

Joy Delaney, many years married, mother of four adult children, and previous owner of a well-know tennis academy, has disappeared. Her children are unsure what to do. Call the police? Wait it out? Meanwhile, her husband Stan does not seem overly concerned. Suspicion mounts, not only on Stan, but on a mysterious woman who spent several months in the Delaney home the previous year. Did Joy disappear of her own free will, or was something more sinister at work?

I would consider this classical Liane Moriarty. There's an alternate past & present time line, a somewhat dysfunctional family, and some mysterious past incident that the reader is gradually clued into as the story progresses. While portions of the story seem unrealistic, the dysfunctional family and character flaws seem jarringly realistic and tend to hit close to home. I tend to go back and forth with my opinions of Moriarty's novels as I'm reading, but I generally like them in the long run and this one falls into that category as well. I've just started watching the series adaptation -- only 2 episodes in, so I can't share my full opinion on it. I'm not sure I like the casting, and so at this point I'd say (as is often the case), the book is better. ( )

The Delany Family, tennis coaches and players meet their match when a mysterious stranger unexpectedly appears at their door. Could she be involved in their mother's disappearance? ( )

She certainly knows how to write a page-turner. The characters are well-written too; I found myself thinking about them when I wasn't reading the book. Just a richly detailed story all around. ( )

The 60 yr old wife and mother of 4 grown children is missing. No one can find her and the police are finally called. Then comes the history of each person in the family and their individual hang ups and successes. The story goes back and forth between the day she went missing and life before. It takes awhile to see how all the stories intertwine and the difficulties reveal themselves. An interesting read and a surprise ending. Kirkus: Australian novelist Moriarty combines domestic realism and noirish mystery in this story about the events surrounding a 69-year-old Sydney woman?s disappearance.Joy and Stan Delaney met as champion tennis players more than 50 years ago and ran a well-regarded tennis academy until their recent retirement. Their long, complicated marriage has been filled with perhaps as much passion for the game of tennis as for each other or their children. When Joy disappears on Feb. 14, 2020 (note the date), the last text she sends to her now-grown kids�bohemian Amy, passive Logan, flashy Troy, and migraine-suffering Brooke¥is too garbled by autocorrect to decipher and stubborn Stan refuses to accept that there might be a problem. But days pass and Joy remains missing and uncharacteristically silent. As worrisome details come to light, the police become involved. The structure follows the pattern of Big Little Lies (2014) by setting up a mystery and then jumping months into the past to unravel it. Here, Moriarty returns to the day a stranger named Savannah turned up bleeding on the Delaneys? doorstep and Joy welcomed her to stay for an extended visit. Who is Savannah? Whether she?s innocent, scamming, or something else remains unclear on many levels. Moriarty is a master of ambiguity and also of the small, telling detail like a tossed tennis racket or the repeated appearance of apple crumble. Starting with the abandoned bike that's found by a passing motorist on the first page, the evidence that accumulates around what happened to Joy constantly challenges the reader both to notice which minor details (and characters) matter and to distinguish between red herrings and buried clues. The ultimate reveal is satisfying, if troubling. But Moriarty?s main focus, which she approaches from countless familiar and unexpected angles, is the mystery of family and what it means to be a parent, child, or sibling in the Delaney family¥or in any family, for that matter.Funny, sad, astute, occasionally creepy, and slyly irresistible.