book review apples never fall

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Liane Moriarty's Apples Never Fall for Guardian Australia book review September 2021

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty review – overgarnished but pyrotechnic family drama

A missing grandmother is at the heart of this perfectly readable but indulgent new mystery from the mordant queen of Sydney suburbia

E veryone is listening. Cafe waiters are eavesdropping from behind their ordering pads; baristas over the hiss of the espresso machine. Cleaners are mopping up secrets in house after house. Uber drivers can’t help but overhear; pedicurists too. And loyal hairdressers have decades of stories to share – all that tactile intimacy.

In Liane Moriarty’s new novel, Apples Never Fall, a mystery unfolds in snippets and whispers – a suspected murder, a missing body – but every witness has their own story: exams to sit, bills to pay, Tinder dates to preen for, the loneliness of widowhood. They hear what they hear because, in service jobs, they’re treated as invisible – as inert and functional as furniture. Our loose-lipped cast might not notice them, but Moriarty sure does.

Moriarty has an eye for gentrified grotesqueries: retail hubs trussed up as Tuscan villages (“at least the fake cobblestones didn’t catch heels like real cobblestones”); memoir classes in which women in “tailored pants and pearl earrings” craft tales of woe on creamy new stationery; leafy streets patrolled by designer dogs, and double strollers as expensive as cars. There’s a reason she’s the mordant queen of Sydney suburbia.

Until this novel – her ninth – I knew Moriarty’s books only by reputation and buzz from the prestige television adaptations of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers : Nicole Kidman in various shades of aloof. When the galley of Apples Never Fall landed on my doorstep with its 500 pages of wallop, I was primed for a tale of lily-white affluence and its discontents: weaponised gossip, class frictions and the occasional untimely death; a harbour view, perhaps. Moriarty’s trademarks are certainly present, but there’s something else in here – something quiet and clenched – that’s overshadowed by her book’s more salacious trimmings.

In a neighbourhood of “nicely modulated voices” and well-tended gardens, aspiring grandmother and fearsome doubles player Joy Delaney has gone missing. Her husband Stan is suspiciously scratched-up. He blames a vengeful hedge, but the neighbours – ears ever-pricked – heard the pair arguing the night before she disappeared. For more than 40 years, Joy and Stan ran the local tennis school (“Joy made the money and Stan made the stars”) while they lustily produced four enormous, tennis-crazy children (now embittered, tennis-averse adults). But the couple have recently retired and, relieved of all their hectic obligations, their marriage has curdled. “Maybe every marriage had secret cracks that could turn into chasms,” Moriarty ponders. Or maybe the signs were there all along.

The Delaney family is a magnificent snarl of allegiances and grievances, unsalved wounds and intergenerational chafing. There’s churlish, hulking Stan, who once unearthed a Grand Slam champion, only to be cast aside when the kid hit the big time; and the ever-fractious sibling quartet – blue-haired Amy, morally slippery Troy, pathologically laid-back Logan, and Brooke with an e – not one of them a tennis prodigy, nor able to forget it. Joy is forever in the middle, her brood’s peacekeeper-in-chief. She could have made it to Wimbledon, but sacrificed her talent on the altar of family.

When Moriarty plonks us down at the dinner table, her pages are pyrotechnic. The writer turns a Father’s Day lunch into a deliciously theatrical centrepiece – a buffet of bruised egos. There’s Olympic-level bickering, a chocolate brownie duel. Every short Delaney fuse is lit and fizzing, and we can only wait to see who will detonate first. All that emotional shrapnel whizzing past our ears. But farce slips into domestic horror: as the days turn to weeks with no sign of Joy, the children must grapple with the hardening probability that their father has murdered their mother. “Sometimes when she pulled out a funny memory from their shared childhood,” the eldest Delaney daughter, Amy, reflects, “it turned out to be not so funny after all.”

If Moriarty had kept the aperture narrowed – a portrait of a family riven by new suspicions and old rivalries – Apples Never Fall would have been a subtle tale of everyday violence. The ways women are incrementally eroded; the ways men are taught to harness their rage. All the ecstasies and cruelties of elite sports (not to mention its striving parents). But Moriarty wraps her family in a glossier mystery: a young woman arrives on the Delaney doorstep in the dead of night, bruised, bloodied and in need of shelter. Grand revelations brew; ornate revenge.

It’s a restless, rambling subplot that relies, dispiritingly, on a wearying and pernicious shock tactic: a vixenish schemer who cries wolf, faking her claim of intimate partner violence (“another girl’s awful truth at the heart of her awful lie”). That Moriarty’s characters are well aware of the trope – and trust their interloper more readily because of it – makes it all the more grotesque and lazy.

Apples Never Fall ends up feeling indulgently overgarnished, like some ornate cafe breakfast that’s designed to be Instagrammed rather than eaten. It’s all perfectly readable, but it’s hard not to want something more from someone so scabrously smart. “If Joy had been young and beautiful,” Moriarty writes, “the street would’ve been crawling with reporters.” As she’s a woman in her 60s, the case simmers along as a minor neighbourhood scandal. It’s hard not to feel, in so clumsily grafting Joy’s story to a young, titillating stranger, Moriarty has done exactly the same thing.

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‘Apples Never Fall’ Review: A Drama Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a Formula

This Peacock mini-series about a bitter family and a missing woman is TV’s latest adaptation of a novel by the author of “Big Little Lies.”

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A woman standing with a glass of wine looks suspiciously at a seated woman as a man looks away.

By Margaret Lyons

“Apples Never Fall,” premiering Thursday on Peacock, is the third Liane Moriarty book to be adapted for television, following HBO’s “Big Little Lies” and Hulu’s “Nine Perfect Strangers.” But if you told me it was the 10th, I’d believe you, given how familiar it all feels. The seven-episode mini-series is so well-oiled and unsurprising, it just glides on by.

Annette Bening and Sam Neill star as Joy and Stan Delaney, pillars of West Palm Beach, Fla., who are, as the central couples in these kinds of shows always are, seemingly perfect but secretly damaged. They’ve just sold their tennis academy and are balking at the alleged freedoms of retirement, which Joy thought she’d spend with her four adult children.

However, the kids don’t want to hang out with their hovering mom and volatile, bitter dad; they want to have their own lives of not-very-quiet desperation. Troy (Jake Lacy) is the clenched-jaw rich brother, at the tail end of a divorce from a woman everyone else really liked. Amy (Alison Brie) is the “searcher,” as her mother puts it, an aspiring life coach who would be perfectly at home on any show set in California. Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner) wants to be beachy, not sporty, so he works at a marina and does yoga. Brooke (Essie Randles) is a high-strung physical therapist who is supposed to be planning her wedding but may be getting cold feet.

They probably would have kept on like that, except Joy has disappeared. And hmm, now that you mention it, there was that weird con artist, Savannah (Georgia Flood), who ingratiated herself into Joy and Stan’s life under very dubious circumstances. She couldn’t have something to do with it, could she? Well, we better bounce between two timelines to make sure: The days since Joy’s disappearance tick ahead in one timeline as we excavate all the mean family dinners from eight months ago in the other.

The show hits its steady simmer with tense competence and with some good lines. “I didn’t know how to fix it, so I broke it,” Troy says of his marriage, though it applies to all the siblings and their behaviors pretty equally.

All the best scenes are fights, and each character has a little trump card stashed away. As with hammers and nails, when you have a piece of incriminating intelligence about a relative, everything looks like an opportunity to deflect negative attention from yourself and hurt someone else. The children learned this kind of rage distribution and mistrust from Stan, whose rigidity and cruelty, particularly as a tennis coach, fell largely on Troy. Troy thinks his father knows more about his mother’s disappearance, and he’s frustrated — nay, enraged! — by his siblings’ reluctance to see their father as a brute.

And if “Apples” were just a domestic drama, that would probably be enough to sustain a story. But the show is also a missing-person mystery that is nowhere near as mysterious as it seems to think it is. When Savannah rings the Delaneys’ doorbell one night, claiming that she was fleeing her abusive boyfriend and had run right to this very street, a grift is so clearly afoot that the tension is less “hmm, what is really happening?” than “wait, how dumb are these people supposed to seem?” Every scheme is so telegraphed and unsubtle that it is hard to buy into the characters’ capacities to reason.

Mysteries often rely on characters being good liars, on viewers being fooled. To hide in plain sight requires hiding, though, and the show does not deploy any other techniques to cultivate complexity. If anything, it does the opposite: The police officers use their investigation primarily to announce each plot point. (“Well, now we know [a suspect’s] motive!”) There is no humor and little sense of place — the most distinguishing visual feature is the abundance of high ceilings. Even the tennis seems stripped of any psychological resonance.

“Apples” is not selling anything you couldn’t buy elsewhere; it’s a department store, not a fashion house. You can get the exact same scene of “a terrified family of a missing person visits a coroner’s office but finds the wrong body” on the smarter, more provocative “Expats.” You can get the “a storm in Florida also represents a storm [ sagely points at heart ] in here” on the dumber, high-on-its-own-supply “Extrapolations.”

Or perhaps you prefer something from the vintage collection, in which case you can capture the show’s general vibe by heading over to Hulu and recreating ABC’s Sunday night block from 2006-2010: “Desperate Housewives” followed by “Brothers & Sisters.”

That “Housewives” helped inspire the “Real Housewives” franchise, which demonstrated the modern appetite for rich women (some of whom commit crimes) drinking wine and yelling at each other. That formula got classed up by “Big Little Lies,” and, well, here we are again.

Margaret Lyons is a television critic at The Times, and writes the TV parts of the Watching newsletter . More about Margaret Lyons

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In Liane Moriarty’s ‘Apples Never Fall,’ a mother disappears and a family falls to pieces

On the cover of “ Apples Never Fall ,” Australian novelist Liane Moriarty’s ninth book, there are four gorgeous red fruits. These symbolize the four children of Stan and Joy Delaney, a couple whose work and family lives became intertwined after they founded a sought-after tennis academy beside their suburban Sydney home.

Liane Moriarty writes women’s fiction. Have a problem with that? She doesn’t.

Sadly, that combination didn’t play out as Stan and Joy had hoped. As the siblings become adults, disappointments and dysfunction abound, with family members volleying grievances across the Sunday lunch table as fast and furious as their home-court matches of old. Stan and Joy had their own troubled upbringings, but there are a few positive associations, including Grandma’s apple crumble, a dessert so legendary the Delaneys have tried for years to find a reproduction of the one Stan’s late mother used to make. (“Trust the old bag to never share her secret recipe,” Joy thinks. “One day someone would work out the missing single ingredient and then she’d be properly dead.”)

‘Nine Perfect Strangers’: Liane Moriarty is back with another page-turner

Metaphor alert! The Delaney family will soon crumble, too. After Stan and Joy offer shelter to Savannah, a stranger who shows up at their doorstep disheveled and bleeding, the siblings sense a scam. Their parents play strong doubles, though, insisting Savannah is “staying with us for as long as she wants .” But when Joy disappears on Valentine’s Day, it’s Stan everyone suspects, and “everyone” includes their children.

Moriarty excels in unpeeling characters’ psyches, and here she begins with those twitchy, angry children, their individual relationships with their hard-driving “tennis parents” a source of seething angst for all. Even paterfamilias Stan has a tennis loss that rankles: a onetime top seed named Harry Haddad who ditched the family for another coach.

But if there’s one character with whom the author succeeds, it’s 69-year-old Joy, who has, like many women of her boomer generation, tried to be everything to everybody and now feels like she succeeded at nothing. “ ‘Regret’ can be my memoir’s theme, she thought, as she tried to shove the cheese grater into the dishwasher next to the frying pan. A Regretful Life by Joy Delaney.” Her husband and children raged around her, expecting her to pick up the pieces every time — and she did. As the Delaney siblings, Amy, Brooke, Logan and Troy, try to discover what happened to their mother, readers learn how essential she was to her family, especially to Stan, who lurches around his house after her disappearance like a wounded bear.

‘Big Little Lies,’ by Liane Moriarty, reveals parents’ ugly secrets in quiet Aussie town

If Moriarty stumbles at all in this story, it’s at the end when she brings us back into Savannah’s orbit, where things get overlong and a bit convoluted. That’s a shame, because it’s also when we learn what the title is all about, a powerful reminder that parental love and attention do matter over time. Moriarty does know how to combine a family saga with a mystery; she’s done it before (e.g. “ The Husband’s Secret ”). What she has more trouble with may be balancing hope with hopelessness, never an easy task.

But that lapse isn’t all that important. Moriarty tells a great story, understands her characters and cares about them, too. Readers who have kept up with her books will adore “Apples Never Fall,” and readers just discovering Moriarty will seek out her previous titles after savoring this fresh, juicy tale.

Bethanne Patrick is the editor, most recently, of “The Books That Changed My Life: Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians and Other Remarkable People.”

Apples Never Fall

By Liane Moriarty

Henry Holt and Co. 480 pp. $28.99

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Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

APPLES NEVER FALL

by Liane Moriarty ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 2021

Funny, sad, astute, occasionally creepy, and slyly irresistible.

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.

Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-250-22025-7

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021

THRILLER | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | GENERAL FICTION

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THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DEVLINS

by Lisa Scottoline ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2024

As an adjunct member says, “You’re not a family, you’re a force.” Exactly, though not in the way you’d expect.

The ne’er-do-well son of a successful Irish American family gets dragged into criminal complications that suggest the rest of the Devlins aren’t exactly the upstanding citizens they appear.

The first 35 years in the life of Thomas “TJ” Devlin have been one disappointment after another to his parents, lawyers who founded a prosperous insurance and reinsurance firm, and his more successful siblings, John and Gabby. A longtime alcoholic who’s been unemployable ever since he did time for an incident involving his ex-girlfriend Carrie’s then 2-year-old daughter, TJ is nominally an investigator for Devlin & Devlin, but everyone knows the post is a sinecure. Things change dramatically when golden-boy John tells TJ that he just killed Neil Lemaire, an accountant for D&D client Runstan Electronics. Their speedy return to the murder scene reveals no corpse, so the brothers breathe easier—until Lemaire turns up shot to death in his car. John’s way of avoiding anything that might jeopardize his status as heir apparent to D&D is to throw TJ under the bus, blaming him for everything John himself has done and adding that you can’t trust anything his brother has said since he’s fallen off the wagon. TJ, who’s maintained his sobriety a day at a time for nearly two years, feels outraged, but neither the police investigating the murder nor his nearest and dearest care about his feelings. Forget the forgettable mystery, whose solution will leave you shrugging instead of gasping, and focus on the circular firing squad of the Devlins, and you’ll have a much better time than TJ.

Pub Date: March 26, 2024

ISBN: 9780525539704

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

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by Lisa Scottoline

THE SILENT PATIENT

by Alex Michaelides ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.

"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

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by Alex Michaelides

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Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty is a unique mystery and family drama.

Liane Moriarty is one of my favorite authors. Earlier this year, I ranked her best books and it was a lot of fun to take a look back at some of her previous novels. She already has such an impressive career! She’s written all kinds of novels and of course, is most popular for Big Little Lies , followed closely by Nine Perfect Strangers . I think it’s so neat that her novels are adapted for television. I personally love Big Littles Lies but was not a fan of Nine Perfect Strangers (which made me sad because I truly adore her writing).

Even though Nine Perfect Strangers was a disappointment, I’m been so looking forward to Apples Never Fall . I had a feeling that this was going to be a good one and I really enjoyed it. I did have some minor issues with it but overall, I think this was an entertaining and somewhat emotional read at times. And of course it’s full of her dark humor.

What’s the Story About

The story follows a very competitive family full of tennis players. The Delaneys are mainstays in the community. The parents, Stan and Joy, ran a tennis academy for years and now that they’ve sold it, they’re a bit at a lost of what to do next. It’s also debatable if they’re still in love or actually hate each other.

They have four adult children—Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke. Each were tennis stars but none of them made it to the big-time league. While tennis always lingers in the background they’ve also all moved on for the most part. Troy is super successful financial wealthy guy who is both overall confident and completely scared; Brooke just started her own medical practice but suffers from migraines; Logan teaches business at a local community college and seems content but is lying to himself and Amy acts younger than her age with her blue hair and is always on the move but also deals with anxiety and is potentially bipolar.

But one night, a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, changing the course of everyone’s life forever. Eventually Joy goes missing and Stan is the primary suspect.

Where is Joy? Is Stan guilty of murder? And what are Savannah’s true motives?

Family Drama

So I read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising earlier this year, which also feature four siblings. And what I liked about that one was the fact she really dived into the siblings’ relationships. I think Liane could have focused a little more on how the siblings related to each other as adults. It is there and it’s enough but I did want a little more—especially when you’re dealing with four of them and how they all were involved in tennis. But again, I did think they were interesting.

With Liane, you get an in-depth character study of each character—even minor ones that appear on a page for just a bit. We really dive deep into Joy and Stan’s complicated marriage from being madly in love to outright hate. I felt that Liane did a good job showing how a marriage can slowly unravel and minor grievances can build up over time.

I have complicated feelings about the Savannah character. She definitely throws this family a curveball and I’m still processing all her reveals. But what I will say is that she’s unique and her backstory was quite unexpected.

The overall mystery of what happened to Joy is interesting and goes down unexpected paths.

I’m a huge sports fan (if you follow my Twitter, you’ll notice I post plenty of OU football content this time of year). But I have to say, I don’t care that much for tennis. Not that I actively dislike it but just not interested. But I was engaged with this story about a tennis family, especially as I found their actions bizarre in many ways. The competitiveness is something else that’s for sure. Liane really did her research on the sport and what it takes to be successful.

It’s interesting how the love for tennis defines and also defies them in many ways.

Apples Never Fall is an ideal book club book—there’s so much to discuss and dissect. I can see some readers not loving story choices whereas others completely support it. This one is a complicated novel that is well-written and engaging. I highly recommend! For book clubs, check out my discussion questions here .

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#BookReview Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty @HenryHolt #ApplesNeverFall #LianeMoriarty

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty comes a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest

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?

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.

Simmering, cunning, and cleverly intricate!

Apples Never Fall is a compelling, character-driven, domestic thriller that takes you into the lives of the Delaney family as they each grapple with sibling rivalry, enduring jealousy, resentments, and long-buried secrets when their matriarch disappears one day leaving behind only a garbled text message and a husband who seems suspiciously guilty of her murder.

The writing is crisp and tight. The characters are envious, secretive, and troubled. And the plot told using a mixture of narrative, police interviews, and alternating timelines, before-and-after the incident is a mysterious tale full of well-timed twists, unforeseen surprises, red herrings, deception, insecurities, and a whole slew of quirky, eccentric personalities.

Overall, Apples Never Fall is another addictive, astute, tragically comedic tale by Moriarty that highlights once again her innate ability to delve into all the messy psychological and emotional entanglements that exist between family members and is definitely worthy of its spot on everyone’s must-read list this fall.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

Thank you to Henry Holt and Company for providing me with a copy of this story in exchange for an honest review.

About Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Big Little Lies, The Husband’s Secret, and Truly Madly Guilty; the New York Times bestsellers Nine Perfect Strangers, What Alice Forgot, and The Last Anniversary; The Hypnotist’s Love Story; and Three Wishes. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children.

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2 Comments on #BookReview Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty @HenryHolt #ApplesNeverFall #LianeMoriarty

Great review Zoe, this one sounds right up my alley. I enjoy well written domestic thriller.

I am looking forward to this book and I liked Big Little Lies. Thanks for the review, Zoe

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, apples never fall.

Bestselling author Liane Moriarty returns with APPLES NEVER FALL, a scandalous, page-turning novel about the secrets that threaten to tear apart even the most solid unions --- marriage, parenthood, siblinghood --- and whether or not any of us can ever really remember the past perfectly. Infused with the author’s trademark blend of tension and emotional insight, this book is as intelligent as it is compulsively readable.

The Delaneys are fixtures in their Sydney suburb. Joy and Stan are expert tennis players who used their talents to kickstart a famous tennis academy that not only trained professional players in their early years, but gave their community a place to turn to for sportsmanship, connection and family-friendly fun. Their four children, all former tennis stars, are now successful grownups, each with their own careers, relationships and memories of their childhood spent on the courts.

Now in their late 60s, Joy and Stan have sold their beloved academy and are struggling to adapt to their new roles as retirees. Joy, with her entrepreneurial spirit, has trouble winding down and instead immerses herself in educational podcasts so she can impress her children with her knowledge of their illnesses and careers. Stan, the archetypal sports coach, has turned to watching TV and monitoring the rise of his estranged star student, Harry Haddad.

"With perfectly rendered characters that anchor you to the more explosive, shocking portions of the plot, this is an utterly gripping thrill ride of reveals, betrayals and alliances that is as gobsmacking as it is emotional."

When we meet the Delaney siblings, we begin with free-spirited, possibly mentally ill Amy, who is perpetually between jobs, relationships and housing; non-confrontational, complacent Logan, who recently separated from his longtime girlfriend; pompous, wealthy Troy, who splits his time between New York City and Sydney; and physical therapist Brooke, the baby and apple of her father’s eye, the only one he deems a real success for her chosen career’s nearness to sports, though no one knows her marriage is on the brink of divorce.

The children have remained close throughout their adult years, but the reason for their most recent reunion is not a happy one: their mother has gone missing. Even stranger, their father seems unconcerned, even readily admitting that the two fought just before Joy disappeared. As they try to figure out where their mother is, they each recount the last year of their lives, a year fraught with tension, mysterious characters and hard-hitting recollections of their childhoods.

The chapters alternate between the present day and one year earlier, when a young stranger appears on Joy and Stan’s doorstep bloodied and bruised, claiming to have been abused by her boyfriend. The Delaneys have taught many children over the years, so the appearance of a random girl is not terribly unusual. But Savannah claims to have no idea who they are. With little else to occupy their time as retirees, they welcome her into their home, taking advantage of the feeling of a full house after so many years without their own children and no promise of grandchildren on the horizon (something Joy fixates on, though Stan seems ambivalent to the idea of becoming a grandparent). Though their children are initially wary of the battered girl, they eventually warm up to her. Yet one year later, she is completely gone from the picture. It seems impossible that there is no connection between Savannah and Joy vanishing into thin air.

Amy, Logan, Troy and Brooke each grapple with their father’s potential role in their mother’s disappearance. True, he is acting suspiciously, but he has never been violent, and their parents have always been visibly, happily in love. Or have they? Close in age but entirely different in spirit and countenance, each Delaney child seems to have their own idea of their mother, their father and their parents’ marriage. At the same time, they start to realize that while their parents could read their games with perfect accuracy, predicting every shot and planning for every weakness, Joy and Stan were often clueless about their feelings, blinded by a shared love of tennis and the Delaney family legacy on the court. As each child unpacks their own history, their siblings’ history and their father’s possible motive, the Delaneys divide into halves: two children certain that their father is innocent and two just uncertain enough to question everything they thought was true about their family.

What an absolute rollercoaster this book is! Liane Moriarty is a truly gifted writer, perhaps the keenest observer of the human condition writing today, and her ability to peel back the layers of the mostly stereotypical characters (the overachieving daughter, the pompous son, the hard-hearted coach) and find out exactly what makes them tick is unparalleled. The notion of using four adult children, all raised with strict guidelines for success, as protagonists becomes totally fresh in Moriarty’s hands, as each child is written clearly and vividly. Reading about Amy, Logan, Troy and Brooke (and their parents, of course) through one another’s eyes, we get a complete picture of each character, including, most importantly, the things they hide from one another and refuse to admit about themselves.

Exuberant, cleverly constructed and emotionally taut, APPLES NEVER FALL is a damning, eye-opening portrait of a family, as well as a reminder that growing pains are not limited to any age. With perfectly rendered characters that anchor you to the more explosive, shocking portions of the plot, this is an utterly gripping thrill ride of reveals, betrayals and alliances that is as gobsmacking as it is emotional. Adapting any of Moriarty’s novels for the screen seems like an obvious choice, but if anyone in Hollywood is reading this review, believe me, this one needs to be next.

Reviewed by Rebecca Munro on September 24, 2021

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

Publication Date: July 19, 2022
Genres: Fiction , Mystery , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller , Women's Fiction
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN-10: 1250220270
ISBN-13: 9781250220271

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Book Review of APPLES NEVER FALL

Ugh . I can’t believe I’m writing a DNF review of a Liane Moriarty book…

But, I am. I totally am. **face palm*

What’s Apples Never Fall about?

Apples Never Fall is the newest release from this highly talented writer, who is usually one of my favorite authors. I will read anything she puts out. Generally, I’ve liked all of Moriarty’s books, and I’ve absolutely loved some of them (see below).

As with most Moriarty novels, Apples Never Fall contains family drama and secrets, with someone possibly concealing a murder. The Delaney family is full of sibling rivalry, a perhaps not-so-perfect marriage, and a lot of money that clearly doesn’t buy happiness.

And, tennis. A surprising amount of tennis.

Why I DNF’d Apples Never Fall

I was invested in the entire Delaney family from the beginning, and I was intrigued by the premise of the novel – their beloved mother and wife has disappeared without a trace, and her husband may be to blame.

However, about 100 pages in, my enthusiasm for everyone and everything started to wane. There’s a lot of tension in Apples Never Fall between the four siblings. I’m an only child, so maybe I just don’t get all the petty one-upsmanship and bickering that goes on between brothers and sisters, but…there’s a lot of it in this book. It got annoying.

There’s also clearly some kind of con going on between the parents and a stray waif they randomly take in. Said waif may or may not have something to do with the mom/wife’s disappearance. (Note: this is not a spoiler; the siblings are all thinking this from the get-go.) I quickly formed my own theories about what was going on with this sitch and continued reading, eager for when the truth would come out.

After about 200 pages of wondering where the heck the mother/wife is and whether or not the father/husband actually killed her… I flipped to the back of the book to find out what happens.

When I read it, my first reaction wasn’t “OMG! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”

It was “Do I really need to read 200 more pages to find this out?”

After a few minutes of waffling, I closed Apples Never Fall and placed it on my library return pile for the next day.

As I like to say, not everything can be a winner , especially when you’ve churned out as many hits as Moriarty. Similar to my feelings about my reader-relationship with Jane Green , and particularly after my so-so take on Nine Perfect Strangers , I can’t help wondering if I’ve just out-grown my proclivity for Moriarty’s books.

Should you read Apples Never Fall ?

If you’re a Liane Moriarty fan, Apples Never Fall is probably worth reading. There’s nothing wrong with the story, per se; it just takes too long to get where it’s going. I know plenty of people who enjoyed this one, so you may, too. I mean, Peacock is making a movie/miniseries of Apples Never Fall. So, obviously, someone liked it.

If you’ve never read Liane Moriarty book, please do not let Apples Never Fall be your first foray into this author’s works. I don’t think it does her justice. If you’re looking for great domestic suspense, I recommend Big Little Lies or The Husband’s Secret , and if you’re looking for women’s fiction, I can’t say enough good things about The Hypnotist’s Love Story , What Alice Forgot , and The Last Anniversary .

Will I watch the series of Apples Never Fall ?

2024 update: I just found out a miniseries is being made of Apples Never Fall . After the success of Big Little Lies on HBO and Nine Perfect Strangers on Hulu, I guess I’m not surprised. But, I would have thought a different (read: better ) Moriarty book would have been adapted for screen.

That being said, I’ll probably watch an episode or two of Apples Never Fall when it comes on Peacock. I DNF’d reading Saint X , which was also made into a miniseries, and I ended up enjoying the show much more than the book. So maybe I’ll like the screen adaptation of Apples Never Fall better, too.

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2 thoughts on “ Book Review of APPLES NEVER FALL ”

Totally agree with you on everything you have written including the recommendations for other Lianne Moriarty novels.

Felt the same way as you with Nine Perfect Strangers too.

Hoping the same doesn’t happen with Jodi Picoult as have her most recent on my TBR pile!

Hi, Katie! I’ve never read Jodi Picoult (well, maybe one, a long time ago!), but I could imagine the same thing happening with her books! After awhile and after so many books, how can every single one be fantastic? I hope her newest lives up to your expectations, though!

Apples Never Fall : Book summary and reviews of Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

Summary | Reviews | More Information | More Books

Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' rating:

Published Sep 2021 480 pages Genre: Thrillers Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers comes a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest.

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.

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Reader reviews.

"Moriarty is a master of ambiguity and also of the small, telling detail...Funny, sad, astute, occasionally creepy, and slyly irresistible." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "[An] engrossing psychological thriller...Moriarty expertly delves into the innermost thoughts of each of the children, exposing secrets unbeknownst to each other; artfully balances the present-day plot with revealing backstory; and offers several different possibilities for what happened to Joy. Only the overlong conclusion disappoints. Moriarty's superb storytelling continues to shine." - Publishers Weekly "I loved it. An absolute page-turner with all the wit and nuance that put Liane Moriarty head and shoulders above the crowd. Liane Moriarty shows once again why she leads the pack." - Jane Harper, New York Times bestselling author of The Dry and The Survivors

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Liane Moriarty Author Biography

Liane was born in Sydney, Australia in the spring of 1966. It was a beautiful day, according to her mother, who has an excellent memory for weather. A few hours after Liane was born she smiled directly at her father through the nursery glass window, which is remarkable, seeing as most babies can't even focus their eyes at that age. Her first word was 'glug'. This was faithfully recorded in the baby book kept by her mother. As the eldest of six children, Liane was the only one to get a baby book so she likes to refer to it often. She can't remember the first story she ever wrote, but she does remember her first publishing deal. Her father 'commissioned' her to write a novel for him and offered an advance of $1. She had no agent, so accepted his first offer and wrote a three volume ...

... Full Biography Link to Liane Moriarty's Website

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Apples Never Fall

Questions, ending & explanations.

See below for an explanation of the ending and other questions about Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty. If you have other questions that aren't already covered here, feel free to drop a comment!

Where can I find a full plot summary for Apples Never Fall?

Right here! You can find a quick recap and a lengthier version of the summary over here .

Where can I find book club discussion questions forApples Never Fall?

Right here! Discussion questions are availble on this page (below the book review section).

What is the ending? How does Apples Never Fall End?

It turns out that Savannah is the sibling of Harry Haddad, a former star student who is now a famous tennis player. She came to their house as a child once when her brother was being picked up, but she everyone was mean to her, and she was determined to exact revenge.

In October, Savannah dropped the bombshell that Joy was the reason that Harry left their tennis school. It turns out that Joy suggested to Harry’s dad (Elias) that Harry leave because she didn’t want Stan to be traveling internationally all the time and leaving her along to raise the kids and run their business. (Joy tells them it was also so he could focus on coaching their kids, but later she admits to herself that it was more for herself and because she was angry at Stan for walking out on her all the time).

This revelation caused Stan and Joy to have to confront some the issues in their marriage. Just before Joy’s disappearance, they’d gotten into an argument. Joy had been angry about giving up her profession for Stan, and she’s tired of him walking out on her instead of dealing with the issues in their marriage. Stan had been angry about Joy “sabotaging” him and walks out of that argument as well. (But in that moment, Stan realizes he walks out because his father was violent towards his mother, and when he gets angry he worries that he’ll be just like his father. Instead, he tries to just walk away if he’s ever in a similar situation, which is why Stan forces himself to walk out.)

In the end, the police show up to arrest Stan, but then Joy Delaney walks through the door. She has been on a 21-day off-the-grid retreat with Savannah. Savannah had just so happened to call her after Stan walked out (she was staying with Dr. Henry Edgeworth — someone else she was getting revenge on — at the time which is why the police though Joy had chatted with him that day). Joy wanted to go away for a bit and then come back to work on their marriage. It turns out she had left a note on the fridge for Stan but it fell off, and her text to the kids ended up full of typos and autocorrects which is why it was full of gibberish.

The book ends with Savannah traveling to Adelaide visit her own mother and confront her about the way she treated her as a child (not letting her eat so she could be a skinny dancer). When her mother takes her sleeping pills, Savannah drags her into her old room, puts some food and water in there, leaves a note telling her mother to ration it carefully and then locks her in there. She then flies off. The book ends with Savannah returning at a later time, not knowing if her mother is still in there or if she got out or if she’s still alive.

What’s the meaning of the title?

“Apples Never Fall” is a reference to the idiom that apples never fall too far from the tree. It basically means that kids tend to be similar to their parents. In this case, it seems to have to do more with the fact that kids are very much the product of their parents.

This book deals with how the kids (and Savannah) are the product of their upbringing and how that’s shaped them and their lives.

Does Savannah’s mother die in the end? Did Savannah ever unlock the bedroom door?

I think it’s purposely left ambiguous, but I think there’s a reasonable chance that there’s a decent chance that her mother is probably dead. She certainly created a situation where her mother was likely to die unless she managed to find a way out of that situation.

Savannah does not go back to unlock the bedroom door and doesn’t return until much later, so unless her mother somehow managed to figure something out, then her mother is probably dead.

What is the meaning of the last line in the book where “The girl said, ‘My mother plays tennis.’”?

I think the implication is that Savannah is reinventing her image of herself — and in this case she is fantasizing that Joy is her real mother. Instead of dealing with and processing how she was mistreated by her mother, she’s simply choosing to invent a version of herself where that wasn’t her other.

Joy plays tennis so, it seems likely that in this reinvented version of herself, she imagines that Joy is her mother.

In the paragraphs leading up to the last line, when Savannah says that her mother is the opposite and starts thinking about all the wonderful things her mother did, she’s not thinking about her real mother at all. She’s imagining what her childhood would have been like if Joy had been her mother.

Why does Savannah use phases or expressions that are more appropriate for someone older than her age?

Savannah’s shtick is that she has her own alternate reality, and she creates that reality by drawing from sources around her like TV shows she’s seen or movies. She reuses these phrases or retells these stories verbatim at times, passing these words and stories off as her own.

Have more questions? Leave them in a comment below!

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In Apples Never Fall , 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 Delaney family is a communal foundation. Stan and Joy are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killer 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 they 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. Well, that depends on how you define success. No one in the family can really tell you what Troy does, but based on his fancy car and expensive apartment, he seems to do it very well, even if he blew up his perfect marriage. Logan is happy with his routine as a community college professor, but his family finds it easier to communicate with his lovely girlfriend than him. Amy, the eldest, can’t seem to hold down a job or even a lease, but leave it to Brooke, the baby of the family, to be the rock-steady one who is married with a new solo physiotherapy practice . . . which will take off any day now.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door. She says she chose their house because it looked the friendliest. And since Savannah is 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, everyone will wonder what exactly went on in that household after Savannah entered their lives that night. Because now Joy is missing, no one knows where Savannah is, and the Delaneys are reexamining their parents’ marriage and their shared family history with fresh, frightened eyes.

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Here are all the biggest changes between the book Apples Never Fall and the Peacock series

From key relationships to the ending, these are some of the biggest differences between the two works.

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the book and the TV series Apples Never Fall .

As fans of Liane Moriarty 's family drama-cum-mystery novel Apples Never Fall tune in to the new Peacock series of the same name (now streaming), they'll notice some changes right off the bat.

While they both follow the seemingly perfect Delaney family , consisting of two newly retired tennis coaches and their four adult children — who are left reeling when a mysterious woman named Savannah enters their lives and their mother later goes missing — no adaptation is ever verbatim and some differences are always to be expected.

And as such, Apples Never Fall features some key changes that fans of the book might be surprised about. Ahead, EW breaks down some of the biggest tweaks from book to screen.

Vince Valitutti/PEACOCK via Getty

The physical differences

The most obvious, but perhaps least important, change from the book to the series involves the way the characters look. In the book, the Delaney family is described as mostly being a bunch of tall and dark tennis giants. But in the show, they're a lot more average-sized, with more fair hair and blue eyes mixed in. (To recap, the show's family consists of parents Sam Neill and Annette Bening as Stan and Joy, and Alison Brie , Jake Lacy , Conor Merrigan-Turner, and Essie Randles as their children Amy, Troy, Logan, and Brooke.)

The relationships

Several relationships between characters have been tweaked in the show. For instance, in the book, Brooke is married but separated from a man named Grant, but in the series, she's engaged to a woman named Gina. And in the show, Troy has an entire subplot dealing with an affair he's having with his boss' wife that is nonexistent in the book. Speaking of affairs, in the novel, Joy's long-ago affair with another man is explained as more of a one-off, drunken kiss-type situation that Stan is well aware of, but in the show it seems like it was more involved, even though she eventually broke it off and chose her family instead. It also becomes more of an issue between her and Stan in their pivotal fight. And if all that cheating wasn't enough, Brooke also hooks up with Savannah (played by Georgia Flood in the series) — largely because she thinks her fiancée is cheating on her — neither of which happen in the book.

The boat and the "body"

In the show, Logan works at the marina by day and does yoga by night. Instead of the police finding security cam footage of Stan loading what could be a dead body in a bag into his car like in the book, Stan uses a boat from the marina for his mysterious disposal. There's also a possibly ominous boat outing with Stan, Joy, and Savannah on the same boat before Joy goes missing, but the book makes no mention of any boats or aquatic outings.

Vince Valitutti/PEACOCK

In the show, Savannah has a more involved criminal past. We learn that she has used at least three different aliases across three states, and at one point detectives meet with a criminal accomplice of hers, whom she mysteriously paid $10k. She presumably got that money after blackmailing Troy about his affair, which of course doesn't happen in the book since Troy didn't have an affair (instead, he tries paying off Savannah to get her to leave). In the show, we also learn that after Harry the tennis star and his dad left Savannah (whose real name is Lindsay) and their mom, Savannah/Lindsay kind of lost it and started stalking Harry. At one point she broke into her brother's house with a gun, so he paid her $500k, retired from tennis, and prayed it was the end of his dealings with her.

Jasin Boland/PEACOCK

The endings of both the novel and the show are largely happy: Joy was never really missing; she ran off with Savannah to get away and do something for herself, and the Delaney family comes back together stronger than ever having worked through years and years of trauma. However, the similarities end there. On the page, Savannah and Joy went to a completely off-grid health retreat together, part ways at the end of it, and Joy returns home stunned to find everyone thinking she'd been killed. On screen, a cellphone-less Joy goes off with Savannah to her secret hideaway in the Georgia mountains (presumably paid for by the money she got off her brother, Harry) and Savannah cuts her own phone line. When Joy learns there was a hurricane back home, she insists on leaving, but when they do, Savannah violently crashes the car on their way out of town. Before running away from the scene of the crime, she asks Joy for forgiveness. Joy survives the accident and finds her way back home.

Additionally, while some childhood abuse is implied in the show between Savannah and her mother, the book ends with an entire subplot from Savannah's perspective revealing the extent of the abuse she suffered, and how, in revenge, she's been keeping her mother hostage. While we do ever-so-briefly meet Savannah and Harry's mom in the show, none of the rest of this plot is included in the final episode, and the last time we see Savannah, she's on the run and her fate is ultimately left up to the viewer.

All episodes of Apples Never Fall are now streaming on Peacock.

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Apples Never Fall

52 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 14

Chapters 15-25

Chapters 26-35

Chapters 36-50

Chapters 51-71

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Summary and Study Guide

Apples Never Fall (2021), by veteran Australian novelist Liane Moriarty, begins as a mystery thriller: Joy Delaney , a 60-something mother and retired tennis coach, suddenly vanishes on Valentine’s Day, and all signs point to her moody and volatile husband, Stan, himself a former world-renowned tennis coach, as the most likely killer. However, as the days pass and the police continue to search for Joy, the novel evolves into a probing psychological study of a profoundly dysfunctional family. Each of the couple’s four grown children harbors deep grudges and bitter resentments against the parents who dreamed of coaching their kids to be world-class tennis champions.

Moriarty’s ninth novel, Apples Never Fall features provocative and emotional scenes with a cinematic sensibility and a cast of vividly drawn characters in conflict with each other and their pasts. The novel quickly became an international best-seller, and even before its September publication, it was optioned by NBC Universal for a television mini-series.

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Chapter to chapter, the novel moves between events in the three weeks after Joy’s disappearance on Valentine’s Day and events in the months leading up to her disappearance. For convenience, this guide separates the two timelines.

Joy and Stan Delaney , married close to 50 years, are adjusting to retirement. For four decades, they ran one of Australia’s most respected tennis academies. Their four grown children—Troy, Logan, Amy, and Brooke—were all once promising rising tennis players but have now settled into lives far from sports, finding their own successes (and failures) and handling their own relationships, sometimes stormy, sometimes passionate.

The summer before Joy goes missing, while she and Stan are at home together, they answer a sudden knock at the door and are stunned to find a bloodied and bruised woman there. She identifies herself as Savannah Pagonis and begs for their help—her boyfriend beat her and she has nowhere else to go. For reasons she’s not entirely sure of, Joy takes in the terrified young woman and even offers her one of the children’s old bedrooms—to the chagrin and bewilderment of Stan and their children. The presence of the obviously troubled young woman and Joy’s maternal care for a total stranger spark wounding discussions among the siblings about their upbringing under their father’s authoritarian discipline: He dreamed of coaching them all to professional tennis glory only to see each of those dreams, in turn, collapse of its own irony: Troy was too flashy and volatile on the court; Brooke was crippled by migraines brought on by the stress of competition; Logan drifted, too noncommittal for any success; and Amy allowed too many uncertainties into her head.

Savannah quickly becomes a fixture at the Delaney home, doing all the cooking for the couple. During the Christmas holiday, tempers flare, and the family begins the difficult process of addressing decades-old emotional wounds. Logan checks into Savannah’s background and finds questionable details in her story about a supposedly abusive boyfriend, while Amy discovers that Savannah was briefly involved in an internet scam that involved selling fake tennis memorabilia. Concerned, Joy enters Savannah’s room while she’s out. She makes the startling discovery that Savannah is the sister of retired tennis star Harry Haddad, a protégé whom Stan developed years earlier until Haddad suddenly, inexplicably, left for another coach and subsequently won multiple Grand Slam titles. Under pressure from the family, Savannah confesses that she knew the Delaneys and that she was raised by an abusive mother who literally starved her, trying to mold her into a world-class ballet dancer. She says that she recalls coming to the Delaney house once, desperate for food, when her brother was training and that the family summarily turned her away. Savannah agrees to leave the house—but before she packs, she tells Stan that it was Joy who encouraged young Harry to leave Stan’s academy.

Stan can’t handle this revelation, and for weeks the couple alternates between bitter fights and long periods of silence. On Valentine’s Day, Joy—determined to make a peace offering to Stan—bakes him apple crumble pie, his favorite. Stan, however, blows up over what he now sees as Joy’s deliberate destruction of his coaching career. He walks out, and when he returns—he later tells police—Joy is gone. After several days, the family reports the missing mother, and the police immediately suspect Stan. The kids aren’t sure. As the investigation continues, Stan learns that Harry Haddad is returning to competitive tennis.

As the Delaney siblings struggle with the disappearance, they inevitably assess their lives: Brooke, separated from her husband, runs a homeopathic physiotherapy clinic that is floundering. Logan—whose longtime girlfriend, Indira, has left him, impatient with his indecisiveness—indifferently pursues teaching business communications at a community college. Troy, a ruthless but successful wildcat stock investor, struggles to work out details in a plan for his ex-wife to use embryos they froze when they were married. Amy, who works part-time as a taste tester, is haunted by various syndromes and neuroses.

After grainy footage from a neighbor’s security camera shows Stan struggling to put a roll of carpet in his car the night Joy went missing, the police believe they have sufficient cause to arrest him. While they’re at the house, however, Joy arrives. She quickly explains that she was emotionally confused and needed time away, so she impulsively agreed to go away with Savannah on a fancy 21-day off-the-grid retreat. She left a note, but Stan deduces that a faulty refrigerator magnet let the note slide to the floor and then the family dog ate it. Revived by her retreat, Joy is ready to make her marriage and retirement work. Stan explains to the police that he replaced a carpet that Joy long disliked to make up for quarrelling with her. The family reunites and pledges to work through their complicated and messy emotions together.

As the novel closes, Savannah boards a plane and heads back home to Adelaide. She reveals that before she left months earlier, she drugged her mother and left her locked in her bedroom with only a few protein bars and bottles of water, sure that her mother would slowly starve to death. Savannah is returning there to see whether her plan worked.

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Alison Brie Reacts To The Apples Never Fall Ending, And How It Differs From The Book: 'The Show Is Really About Secrets Coming To Light’

What a wild ending.

Alison Brie is illuminating as the free-wheeling, high-strung mess Amy Delaney in Peacock’s TV version of Liane Moriarty’s popular novel Apples Never Fall . The story is so compelling not only because it is about a missing mother and a father who is the main suspect, but because the Delaney family also have four children who align in different ways and take sides when their mother disappears. Which is what makes the ending so compelling, juicy, and –dare I say it? – upsetting for some critics .

CinemaBlend recently spoke with Brie about the TV series from the author of Big Little Lies , Nine Perfect Strangers and more. Of course, Apples Never Fall makes some big changes from the book , and that includes taking creative license with the ending. If you’ve caught the show with your Peacock subscription , you may already be aware of some of the differences, but I will be getting into some spoilers below . But first, how does the actress feel about it?

I was really excited reading the ending of the show, and a bit surprised. We veer a little bit from the ending in the book, which I actually think is exciting. So readers of the book have something new to experience in watching the show. And as you said, this show really is about secrets coming to light. And the final episodes are no different. If anything, it's, you know, an amped up version of sort of that thing that you've been seeing the whole time, and what's gonna happen to this family. So I was really excited about it.

While Alison Brie claims the show manages to “veer a little bit” from Moriarty’s original ending, there are actually 2 major changes from the books I think are worth pointing out.

The setting for Joy's "escape" is different and eerier.
The messed up twist at the end of the book is left vague in order to focus on a Delaney reunion.

In Moriarty's version, matriarch Joy ultimately decided she needed a break from the Delaneys and headed with Savannah to a retreat where cell phone use was not allowed, thus allowing her children (and the police) to think she disappeared. She eventually returned home, but in the meantime, we'd learned more about Savannah. She’d suffered abuse under her mother while her tennis star brother left her behind, and had lately become her mother’s abuser, locking her up with limited food and water during the time she’d been with Joy and co.

That’s the real twist of the book. It wasn’t really about Joy’s disappearance, but about what Savannah was hiding after all. Interestingly, this is muted in the series to focus much more on the Delaney bent, which is the "something new" Brie commented on that readers are able to experience.

The streaming subscription version swapped a retreat for a Georgia home Savannah allegedly owned in which she cut the phone lines after getting Joy, who is played by Anette Bening in a TV first , to come for a visit following her fight with Stan (which led to the bicycle accident and the bloody jacket).

The second change came after Joy decided to go home. Savannah and Joy getting in a care accident could have led to a very different ending to this series, but instead, Joy simply returned home to remark on the “mess” the hurricane has caused on the family’s backyard tennis court. Joy came to realize Savannah was tennis protege Harry Haddad's sister who was abused, but when Savannah exited the show, her own secrets were left vaguer than what we get in the book.

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As Alison Brie noted while speaking to us: "this show really is about secrets coming to light," and while some of that had to do with Savannah's secrets, I'm happy the show ending came with some closure for the Delaneys. The series is not about the culmination of Joy disappearing, it's more about using Joy's disappearance to confront a lot of familial issues the family thought they had buried but had kept bubbling up to the surface in myriad ways.

Once Joy got home, there was still work to be done, but all in all, I found this ending more satisfying than the book, though if you go into this one thinking it's simply a murder mystery, you're definitely going to get more than you'd bargained for.

Apples Never Fall is currently streaming on the 2024 TV schedule over at Peacock.

Jessica Rawden is Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. She’s been kicking out news stories since 2007 and joined the full-time staff in 2014. She oversees news content, hiring and training for the site, and her areas of expertise include theme parks, rom-coms, Hallmark (particularly Christmas movie season), reality TV, celebrity interviews and primetime. She loves a good animated movie. Jessica has a Masters in Library Science degree from Indiana University, and used to be found behind a reference desk most definitely not shushing people. She now uses those skills in researching and tracking down information in very different ways.

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Apples Never Fall Ending & Plot Summary Spoilers from the Book, Explained

Apples Never Fall’s plot is full of secrets surrounding the Delaney family. Read on for a full breakdown of the novel, including its ending.

Apples Never Fall is a popular novel by Liane Moriarty, who is also known for writing Big Little Lies , among others.

The book was optioned for a limited series which will make its debut on Peacock in March, featuring an all-star cast that includes Annette Bening, Sam Neill, and Alison Brie.

What's Apples Never Fall Plot All About?

Liane Moriarty’s 2021 novel Apples Never Fall focuses on the Delaneys, a family that, on the surface, appears to have everything figured out.

The parents, Joy and Stan, are retired tennis instructors and have four adult children: Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke. Things are pretty great for the Delaney family until it all begins to come crashing down around them.

The trouble starts when Joy disappears, and to further complicate matters, Stan is the primary suspect in the case. The four siblings promptly take it upon themselves to try and make sense of what happened and find their mother.

But before all that happened, a physically injured young woman named Savannah randomly shows up on Stan and Joy’s doorstep and pleads with the family to help her. They welcome this stranger into their home, but the girl begins to seem a little sketchy.

Upon investigating Savannah’s background, the kids discover that all is not right with her. She was previously associated with a scam and what’s more, her initial story, that her boyfriend beat her, had some holes in it.

To make matters all the worse, it’s revealed that Savannah is actually the sister of Harry Haddad, Stan’s former top tennis student. Harry left the tennis school some time prior and Savannah brings forth the revelation that it was Joy who counseled Harry to call it quits.

Stan and Joy have a huge fight, and that’s when Joy vanishes.

Spoilers Explained for Apples Never Fall's Ending

The readers’ response to the conclusion of Apples Never Fall was decidedly mixed, with many feeling that the book ended in an anticlimactic fashion.

At the end of the book, Joy reappears, alive and well. As it turned out, she was with Savannah on a little off-the-grid getaway. She had left a note explaining that she’d be away but it was unfortunately misplaced after she left.

Stan is cleared of all charges and he and Joy begin to deal with the issues that have been plaguing their marriage.

Now, it remains to be seen how closely the upcoming Apples Never Fall Peacock miniseries, but perhaps the story could be altered a bit due to the somewhat divisive reaction to how the novel ended.

That question will need to wait until Thursday, March 14 to be answered, when all seven episodes of Apples Never Fall arrive on Peacock.

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Alison Brie and Jake Lacy Anchor Twisty Thriller Apples Never Fall

Jake Lacy, Essie Randles, Alison Brie, and Conor Merrigan-Turner in Apples Never Fall (Photo: Vince Valitutti/Peacock)

There's nothing subtle about the cold open that kicks off Apples Never Fall , Peacock's adaptation of Liane Moriarty's bestselling novel. As the chorus of "Unsecret" by Buried rings out, warning listeners of "secrets buried in the backyard," Joy Delaney (Annette Bening) rides her bicycle to the grocery store, where she grabs a bright, red apple and softly tosses it in the air like a tennis ball. Seconds later, Joy's bike lies in the middle of the street, blood dripping from the frame. Joy is nowhere to be seen, but her purchases — apparently, she filled her basket with a dozen loose apples and nothing else — are strewn about the road, forming a makeshift halo around the bloodied bike.

The scene effectively introduces the mystery at the center of Apples Never Fall — what happened to Joy Delaney? — but it's clumsy enough to plant a seed of doubt about showrunner Melanie Marnich's ability to translate Moriarty's book to the screen. Happily, though, this first impression isn't representative of the show as a whole. Like the seemingly picture-perfect Delaney family, there's more to this story than meets the eye: While its many twists are likely to keep viewers hooked for seven episodes, the drama's greatest strength lies its realistic depiction of familial dysfunction, particularly the complex, teasing dynamic between Joy's adult children, played by Alison Brie, Jake Lacy, Conor Merrigan-Turner, and Essie Randles.

The Delaney children each take on a distinct role that reflects their respective relationships with their parents, Joy and Stan (Sam Neill), who recently retired after a celebrated career as tennis coaches. The oldest of the bunch, Amy (Brie), is still looking for her purpose, but despite being mocked for her embrace of spirituality and alternative healing, she's the only one willing to wear her heart on her sleeve. Successful venture capitalist Troy (Lacy) has taken the opposite approach: After a lifetime spent fighting with Stan on and off the court, he prefers to keep his family at a distance, although he's made a habit of stepping in to help them financially when needed. Meanwhile, younger siblings Logan (Merrigan-Turner) and Brooke (Randles) have done everything possible to win Stan's affection; even as adults, they structure their lives around appeasing their father, sacrificing their own dreams so as not to disappoint him.

Even if the Delaneys aren't quite happy, they're sufficiently stable to project an outward image of harmony — until Joy suddenly disappears. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are immediately suspicious. Beyond the abandoned bike introduced in the opening minute, Joy left her cell phone at home, and Stan, now with a deep cut across his cheek, has spent days lying to his children and curious neighbors about her absence. As the Delaney children begin looking into the case (and Jeanine Serralles and Dylan Thuraisingham's local detectives do the same) they uncover dark secrets about Joy and Stan's marriage that force them to reevaluate everything they knew about their relationship to each other and their parents.

As with Moriarty's previous work ( Big Little Lies , Nine Perfect Strangers ), those reveals come fast and furious until the limited series's final moments. It's difficult to discuss the season's trajectory without getting into spoilers, but the Delaneys' secrets, which range from the romantic to the professional variety, emerge naturally over time; they never feel forced or doled out with the intention of misleading viewers, as many streaming thrillers are wont to do. Past tensions, including the cause of the rift between Troy and Stan, also come full circle, creating a sense of cohesion across the show's multiple timelines.

Apples Never Fall 's unexpected turns make for compelling television on their own, but they're particularly powerful because Marnich and directors Chris Sweeney and Dawn Shadforth have such a firm grasp on these characters. With their differing skin tones and distinct features, Brie, Lacy, Merrigan-Turner, and Randles hardly look like siblings, but their constant needling and good-natured jabs instantly scan as genuine. Even when the playfulness fades and the siblings turn on each other, it comes from a place of deep familiarity — from decades of perceived slights and petty rivalries stoked by their hyper-competitive father.

Lacy and Brie, both playing somewhat to type as high-strung people looking for external validation (although Amy is more woo-woo than Brie's usual roles), are excellent in these emotional scenes, while Neill, as the gruff and uncompromising Stan, conveys the unique harm those closest to us are capable of causing. That becomes particularly apparent in his scenes with Bening (also an executive producer), who never mistakes Joy's kindness for weakness. Her resentment is palpable as Joy is iced out by her husband and children, so much so that when she invites an abused woman named Savannah (Georgia Flood) to stay with them, it plays as a believable, if ill-advised, attempt to fill the void with someone who actually appreciates her sacrifices.

Across seven episodes, the limited series alternates between the present-day search for Joy and Savannah's brief but memorable stint with the Delaneys seven months prior. But while the mysterious houseguest proves instrumental to the show's central mystery, Savannah, and Flood's stiff performance, are its weakest links. Details about her backstory and motivations are intentionally withheld until the finale, but up to that point, she's a blank slate; Savannah's only defining characteristic is her shiftiness and the general cloud of suspicion that follows her. Considering how much effort has been paid to developing the characters around her, Savannah's lack of depth proves disappointing, and her overall blandness blunts the impact of the story's final twist.

Apples Never Fall 's climax — and its last-minute return to the land of obtuseness — may leave some viewers dissatisfied, but the limited series is more about the journey than the destination. Anchored by rich performances from its ensemble cast, the efficient, handsomely made adaptation serves up family drama and high-stakes thrills in equal measure. That makes for a winning combination, no matter how much apple imagery Marnich jams into the cold open.

All seven episodes of Apples Never Fall premiere March 14 on Peacock. Join the discussion about the show in our forums .

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg .

TOPICS: Apples Never Fall , Peacock , Alison Brie , Annette Bening , Conor Merrigan-Turner , Essie Randles , Georgia Flood , Jake Lacy , Liane Moriarty , Sam Neill

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, apples never fall.

There are a lot of missing and dead women on TV. It’s not just zombie shows or procedurals, the prestige series has long been in on the game with feminine corpses powering entire series. In Peacock’s missing-woman mystery, “Apples Never Fall,” the beloved and powerful Annette Bening even potentially dons the trope.

As Joy Delaney, she’s the matriarch of a competitive tennis family with four adult children—none of whom went pro, much to the patriarch’s dismay. When she goes missing, the siblings confront a mix of explicit and implicit intergenerational trauma, grappling with the possibility that their father Stan, a perfectly difficult Sam Neill , may have had something to do with it.

What unfurls is Faulkernesque as we see Joy via her family’s flashbacks. She powers the plot but does so mostly in her absence as we see her from others’ points of view. Thanks to these perspectives, we do get a strong sense of who she was—the rock, the one who held it all together but somehow was invisible to those closest to her. More than once, one of her kids exclaims “She saved me.” But, when she was there, they largely took her for granted.

There’s a particularly devastating revelation that on the day she disappeared she called each of her four children, and none of them bothered to pick up their phones. In fact, we see her loneliness in her attachment to Savanah (Georgia Flood playing both warm and conniving to much effect). As we see, Savannah’s a lost soul who worms her way into the Delaney home, mostly by listening to Joy and helping her around the house (what a thought!)—things her own family has neglected for decades. There’s a scene where Joy tells Savanah, “No one breaks your heart like your own kids,” and that could very well be the moral of this story. “Apples Never Fall” becomes a treatise on the ways we fail women, big and small, which shouldn’t surprise as it’s based on a book by Liane Moriarty of “ Big Little Lies ” fame.

As the series moves about its plot—with a compelling mystery that remains open until the last episode—two tragedies compete in its framework. There’s Joy’s disappearance and potential violent death. And there’s the fact that despite “saving” her kids, despite loving them fiercely, taking care of them even when it meant sacrificing her own piece of mind, none of them truly value her. She’s done women’s work and despite it being literally lifesaving (not to mention creating), they refuse to see her. Even outside of the domestic sphere, she doesn’t get credit from her family until is perhaps too late—she was also a competitive tennis player in her own right and ran the club with her husband, but it’s Stan’s career that gets the kids’ and thus our attention.

The cast does the work to make this tension relatable and fraught. Allison Brie as elder daughter Amy inhabits her character’s woo-woo beliefs, building distinct mannerisms that telegraph her inner struggles. Under her thoughtful care, Amy isn’t a caricature or a wounded spirit, she’s a woman struggling to find her place when she’s so different from those who raised her. After his turn as the ever-petulant newlywed in “ The White Lotus ,” Jake Lacy is cornering the market for rich assholes with Troy Delaney. Troy makes his fair share of mistakes but seems more hurt this time around, someone with a festering father wound and no idea how to heal it. Likewise, younger siblings Brooke (Essie Randles) and Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner) are all big, scared eyes—except for when they aren’t. Sometimes, even the most innocent Delaneys are the ones who lash out, unable to follow their mother’s example as it looms so small in their imagination.

Adding to the show’s smart layering, the setting reflects the characters’ privileges and faults. Their Maimi is one of tennis courts and country clubs, boats, and fancy cars. The Delaney home isn’t quite Nancy Meyers nice—it’s lovely but it feels lived in and a bit cluttered (better to hide their secrets in). This aesthetic reeks of respectability and the rough-play sense of themselves the Joy Delaney sells when she talks about her family. Likewise, the siblings’ homes show their arrested development with Troy in spacious modern (he’s a jerk!), Amy in a shared bungalow (she’s a mess!), Logan in nautical practical (he’s a lay about), and Brooke in well-lit cozy (she has a good thing but is going to mess it up!).

These elements, combined with its smart script and editing, build upon each other so that “Apples Never Fall” avoids the problems of the missing-or-dead-woman-as-learning-device. Bening never lets Joy fade. She is powerful when she needs to be, vulnerable and pensive all at once. In her, we see a portrayal of a flawed and dynamic woman who’s happy with her choices if not her current stage in life. The recent Oscar nominee for "Nyad" is such an extraordinary star that here she’s able to portray a warmth that allows others to skip over her accomplishments and edge, even as it does them all a disservice. It’s an arresting portrayal that insists on Joy’s humanity even when her story is being told by those who would negate it.

And perhaps that’s the real lesson in “Apples Never Fall”: to respect the mothers, the women, the adults who protected us when we couldn’t protect ourselves. That work is hard and dangerous, and we should value it at the highest level. That we don’t is the tragic flaw of our social structure.

Now, go call your mother.

Whole series screened for review. Premieres on Peacock tomorrow, March 14th.

Cristina Escobar

Cristina Escobar is the co-founder of LatinaMedia.Co, a digital publication uplifting Latina and gender non-conforming Latinx perspectives in media.

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Film credits.

Apples Never Fall (2024)

Annette Bening as Joy

Sam Neill as Stan

Jake Lacy as Troy

Alison Brie as Amy

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'Apples Never Fall': Latest adaptation of Liane Moriarty book can't match 'Big Little Lies'

All Liane Moriarty book adaptations look alike.

You have the famous cast, the mysterious setting, the time jumps, the infighting and, of course, the big (little) twists. But even with all the right ingredients, the finished dish might end up like Hulu's undercooked 2021 series "Nine Perfect Strangers" instead of HBO's delectable 2017 hit "Big Little Lies."

Is the third time the charm for Moriarty adaptations? Well, not really. This time it's Peacock bringing one of the Australian author's books to life: 2021's "Apples Never Fall." In story and tone, the series (all episodes now streaming, ★★ out of four) hews closer to "Lies" than "Strangers." And it almost gives you those butterflies of excitement again, at first.

"Apples" is an intimate tale of one family, the Delaneys, a Palm Beach, Florida, tennis dynasty rocked when their matriarch Joy ( Annette Bening ) disappears. Is her husband Stan (Sam Neil) to blame? Was it the couple's recent oddly mysterious houseguest Savannah (Georgia Flood)? What do the four adult Delaney children (Alison Brie, Jake Lacy, Conor Merrigan-Turner and Essie Randles) even know about their parents?

It's an enticing mystery made all the more compelling by the performances of the talented cast, particularly stalwarts Bening and Neill. But while the series starts strong and captures your interest for five of its seven episodes, by the finale all the exhilaration of domestic mystery collapses. It's more disappointing than angering – the miniseries had the potential to take your breath away. Instead, you may wander away before you finish.

Stan and Joy Delaney have it all, or so it seems. Retired tennis coaches, they have a beautiful house, rich friends and four grown children who appear to dote on their parents. There's Amy (Brie), a flaky free spirit; Troy (Lacy), a high-powered finance bro with a superiority complex; Logan (Merrigan-Turner), a commitment-phobic marina worker; and stubborn Brooke (Randles), a struggling physical therapist amid a very long engagement. But it's not all fun and tennis matches in the backyard court as they become the subject of a police investigation into Joy's disappearance. Dark family secrets and dynamics unfurl as the four children start to wonder if their genial father might have the capacity to commit murder.

And then there's Savannah, a self-described victim of domestic abuse who shows up one night on the Delaneys' doorstep and somehow is invited to linger for weeks. Surely she has to be involved somehow?

The best parts of "Apples" are about family dynamics. Moriarty excels at revealing the seediest parts of life, so hidden under supposed normality you can see yourself and your family in all that darkness. Series creator Melanie Marnich ("The Affair") captures this with the help of the actors, each hiding something behind their blinding Crest Whitestrips smiles. Lacy, no stranger to playing rich jerks, manages to find the vulnerability in Troy's uber-dude facade. Brie, accustomed to playing buttoned-up Type-A characters, has a lot of fun with Amy's hippie-dippie aesthetic. Neill balances the fine line between gruff and cruel, a symbol of a thousand baby boomer stereotypes without seeming derivative.

But the star is Bening, who has the overworked, overwrought and underappreciated Joy down pat from her first appearance. Her complaints about marriage and motherhood are universal but no less urgent or valid for their ubiquity. That her children only start to appreciate her when she's gone is no coincidence.

'Apples Never Fall' preview: Liane Moriarty's latest fractured family hits Peacock

There's a lot of talent in one (fictional) family, but the material doesn't always match the performances. The book builds to a booming crescendo and then crashes into a quiet, unexpected but anticlimactic conclusion. It's unsurprising that the writers opted to adjust the ending for the screen, but unfortunately, they don't do enough to make it feel vital. "Apples" still wraps up with a lame whimper, even after the writers try to inject more suspense into its final scenes. Momentum is hard to sustain, and endings are hard to nail.

With a more perfect cherry (or apple) on top of the sundae, "Apples" might have gotten closer to the greatness of "Lies."

But alas, it might end up another forgettable footnote in the streaming ecosystem, as ephemeral as the apple you forgot you had for breakfast yesterday.

Action/Adventure
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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Apples Never Fall’ On Peacock, Where Siblings Reexamine Their Parents’ Relationship When Their Mother Disappears

Where to stream:.

Apples Never Fall

‘Apples Never Fall’ Ending Explained: What Happened To Joy Delaney?

‘apples never fall’ gave sam neill what he wants: “i need a project to stretch me”, new shows & movies to watch this weekend: peacock’s ‘apples never fall’ + more.

Apples Never Fall ( now streaming on Peacock ) has a lot of big stars in it, but just because it has a lot of great actors doesn’t mean it’s a great show. However, one of those great actors manages to keep the show from becoming yet another annoying “rich people being awful” story.

APPLES NEVER FALL : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A beach town full of huge houses and palm trees. A woman rides a bike past some of these houses; the bike has a “Delaney Tennis Academy” logo on it. She passes the Garces Tennis Academy, then shops for apples at a market. We then see the same bike in the middle of the road, with a bent wheel and blood on it. Apples are scattered about.

The Gist: The woman is Joy Delaney (Annette Bening); she and her husband Stan (Sam Neil) owned that tennis academy in West Palm Beach for decades before they decided to sell it and retire. We see their four adult children — venture capitalist Troy (Jake Lacy), “seeker” Amy (Alison Brie), physical therapist Brooke (Essie Randles) and surfer Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner) — at a restaurant wondering just what’s going on with their mother. Amy hasn’t heard from Joy in at least a day, which is unlike her, especially since she retired. Troy thinks something is up, too, but Brooke and Logan think they’re overreacting.

We go back to Joy and Stan’s retirement party, where they all look like one big loving family, with the Delaneys being a pillar of the West Palm community. But the more we see their kids talk to each other about their mother not responding to them, the more evident it seems that things between Joy and Stan aren’t great. An unknown woman is mentioned, with Logan suggesting she’s not done inflicting damage on the family.

When the kids come by the house for brunch after Joy and Stan return from a retirement trip to Wimbledon, the tension between their parents is palpable. Stan seems to be especially grumpy, getting on Troy about his divorce and Amy about her aimlessness. Then, when they go out to play tennis, Stan, a former pro who had a fair amount of success, berates them when they make bad shots. When Troy gets on the court with Stan, the volley is so intense that Stan’s bad knee almost gives out.

Late one night, a woman named Savannah (Georgia Flood) knocks on Joy and Stan’s door; she’s got a cut on her head and claims that she jumped out of her boyfriend’s car when an argument they had started getting out of control. Savannah probes Joy about her family life, and they connect to the point where Joy invites her to stay overnight; Stan grumbles that they know nothing about Savannah and that she could be a “maniac” for all they know. But his stance softens the next morning when she makes French toast.

Logan is the first of the siblings to meet Savannah, and is naturally put off by the fact that this “weird woman” knows about him and his brother and sisters.

Back in the “now”, Joy is still missing after three days. Troy goes to the house and is surprised to see Stan there; he’s even more surprised that his dad has a cut on his face. According to Stan, the two of them had an argument, and Joy left to have some space. She hasn’t been in touch and he has no idea where she is. That’s when their housekeeper discovers Joy’s phone in a load of laundry.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Based on Liane Moriarty’s book of the same name (Moriarty is an executive producer, along with Bening; the writer and showrunner is Melanie Marnich), Apples Never Fall has the same semi-dreamy feeling as her other two adaptations, Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers .

Our Take: Apples Never Fall has a lot of the same tropes as other “rich people being awful” series, and those tropes have started to drive us up the wall after seeing them umpteen times over the past seven years, since Big Little Lies made its initial splash. In this case, the Delaneys aren’t exactly wealthy, especially by West Palm standards, but they did pretty well with their academy, even training a Grand Slam winner in Harry Haddad (Giles Matthey), whom we’ll discuss in a bit.

Still, those tropes that drive us nuts are there. The biggest one is the “nothing is as it seems” trope, where we see the happy, contented Stan and Joy, and then bits and pieces of that contentedness gets chipped away through some of the awful behavior we’re not shown at first. And then there are the adult Delaney children; two of them — Amy and Troy — are characterized by their flaws and little else, and the other two — Logan and Brooke — are more or less blank slates. The presence of Savannah immediately raises red flags that we’re pretty sure will be teased out throughout the season’s seven episodes. And we’re not in love with the “now” and “then” timeline jumps. We sighed and rolled our eyes more than once during the first episode.

And yet… Bening’s performance as the seemingly-doomed Joy is the glue that binds all of these annoying tropes together into a narrative that is compelling to watch. We can see behind her smiling, “everything is great!” exterior a roiling loneliness that has been bubbling up for years, long before the Delaneys sold the academy and retired. You can see it when she talks to Savannah about how tough it’s been to figure out what to do when you don’t have the grind of work to worry about, and you don’t spend as much time with your adult kids as you thought you might. It’s likely the reason why she’s so open to having Savannah around the house, despite the fact that she doesn’t know anything about her.

We want to know what happened to Joy, and who did it, mainly because we’re actually rooting for her by the end of that first episode. While everyone around her seems to be overprivileged and/or cartoonish in personality, Joy seems to be authentically searching for that next chapter in life and to be as contented on the inside as she looks on the outside. Her flashes of indifference to Stan when they’re in private show that whatever ends up going on that leads to her disappearance isn’t the first time that he’s been cruel to her, and likely won’t be the last. And the fact that their adult children somehow never see that tension, only concentrating on how their relationship with their father affected their lives, speaks to how well Joy has been able to keep things together for so long.

As we go along, jumping back and forth between the undefined time before Joy’s disappearance and the investigation after it, we hope we get to know more about Troy, Amy, Brooke and Logan. We know that Brooke is in a relationship her girlfriend Gina (Paula Andrea Placido) that may not last, and that Troy’s new relationship with Lucia (Katerina Lenk) has a lot of complications. Harry Haddad and his return to competitive tennis has to factor in here somehow. And, for the love of the TV gods, we hope that Alison Brie’s flibbertigibbetness is explained, because she deserves so much more than playing an aimless 40-year-old that still has to live with roommates.

Sex and Skin: Lucia and Troy are shown in a postcoital scene, with Lucia somehow still wearing her bra.

Parting Shot: The bloody, mangled bike is loaded into the bed of a pickup truck and is driven away. Is Savannah in the driver’s seat? Sleeper Star: Paula Andrea Placido’s Gina is that understanding SO that has to deal with being on the outside looking in as someone they love gets dragged into the muck by their toxic family dynamic, which is why we hope we see more of her and her character gets more to do than just being supportive. Most Pilot-y Line: Savannah is so eager to find out from Joy what her kids’ names and professions are, we were surprised she didn’t ask for their Social Security numbers, too. The scene is either expositional or a way to set up that Savannah is a con artist. Either way, it’s clumsily done.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The only thing that keeps Apples Never Fall from being yet another eye-rolling show about wealthy people being terrible is Annette Bening’s performance as a woman who is still looking for something, even in retirement.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

Annette Bening
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Where can I watch ‘Apples Never Fall’? Cast, plot and how to stream the TV series

B ased on Liane Moriarty’s 2021 novel , Apples Never Fall is a seven-part mystery drama miniseries which centers around the Delaney family and premiered on Peacock on March 14, 2024. Married couple Joy and Stan Delaney ran the local tennis club in West Palm Beach, have four successful, sports-mad children and apparently enjoy an an idyllic family life although like most, not without its problems, internal grievances , perceived favoritism, deceit and resentment .

Their relationship stagnated after both retired and family life plunged into despair when Joy goes missing . As the weeks go by and she fails to return, the children have to come to terms with one, horrifying reality - that maybe their father killed her . Those fears are exasperated by local gossip mongers and neighbors who claim to have heard an argument on the night before Joy vanished into thin air .

Apples Never Fall: Episodes

The Delaneys

Secrets can harm any family...

Apples Never Fall is a complex story which looks at human relationships and the intricate dynamics, pecking orders which are established within them as well as the simmering feuds that never wane. As Joy, played by Annette Bening notes: “You can spend your lifetime with someone, as a wife, or as a mother. But you can never really know who they are”. As family tensions start to rise , both Stan and the children: Amy, Troy, Brooke and Logan, are forced to confront their pasts and the secrets that they have guarded along the way. Each of of the seven episodes focuses on a family member and features stellar performances from Bening and Sam Neill (Stan Delaney) as well as the four siblings Alison Brie (Amy), Jake Lacy (Troy), Conor Merrigan Turner (Logan) and Essie Randles (Brooke).

The series has a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes , based on 37 reviews, with one highlighting: “Apples Never Fall presents intriguing questions, but its biggest strength lies not in its mystery but in the relationships between its characters ”.

Apples Never Fall cast:

Annette Bening (Joy Delaney)
Sam Neill (Stan Delaney)
Alison Brie (Amy Delaney)
Jake Lacy (Troy Delaney)
Georgia Flood (Savannah)
Conor Merrigan Turner (Logan Delaney)
Essie Randles (Brooke Delaney)
Jeanine Serralles (Detective Elena Camacho)
Dylan Thuraisingham (Detective Ethan Remy)
Jordon Mahar (Jacob Azinovic)
Katrina Lenk (Lucia Fortino)
Timm Sharp (Monty Fortino)
Nate Mann (Simon Barrington)
Paula Andrea Placido (Gina Solis)
Pooja Shah (Indira Chaundry)
Quentin Plair (Tyler Cruz)

How can I watch ‘Apples Never Fall’?

Apples Never Fall premiered on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock on Thursday 14 March 2024. Peacock’s streaming service is available on multiple devices (phones, PC, laptop, tablet, TV, streaming players, set-top boxes and game consoles…etc) for viewers based in the United States only.

Peacock offer several subscription plans including: Peacock Premium which is a monthly plan with prices from $5.99 a month with discounts available for annual subscriptions, and and Premium Plus which is ad-free with prices at $11.99 per month.

Until last year, Peacock offered a free entry-level trial but unfortunately that option is no longer available to new subscribers.

The Delaneys appear to have an idyllic family life until Joy disappears, forcing her husband and four adult children to reassess their family history.

IMAGES

Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
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Buzzy Book Review: Apples Never Fall
Book Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

COMMENTS

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Liane Moriarty is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Big Little Lies, The Husband's Secret, and Truly Madly Guilty; the New York Times bestsellers Apples Never Fall, Nine Perfect Strangers, What Alice Forgot, and The Last Anniversary; The Hypnotist's Love Story; and Three Wishes.She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children.
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty review
When the galley of Apples Never Fall landed on my doorstep with its 500 pages of wallop, I was primed for a tale of lily-white affluence and its discontents: weaponised gossip, class frictions and ...
Liane Moriarty's New Novel Is a Family Saga and a Mystery
Sept. 12, 2021. APPLES NEVER FALL. By Liane Moriarty. I couldn't quite square the title of Liane Moriarty's new novel, "Apples Never Fall," with the family story it unfurls. When we meet ...
'Apples Never Fall' Review: A Drama Wrapped in a Mystery Inside a
"Apples Never Fall," premiering Thursday on Peacock, is the third Liane Moriarty book to be adapted for television, following HBO's "Big Little Lies" and Hulu's "Nine Perfect ...
Liane Moriarty's 'Apples Never Fall' book review
Review by Bethanne Patrick. September 16, 2021 at 10:28 a.m. EDT. On the cover of " Apples Never Fall ," Australian novelist Liane Moriarty's ninth book, there are four gorgeous red fruits ...
Summary and Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Book Review. Apples Never Fall is the newest release from Liane Moriarty, a family drama with a little mystery woven in. Liane Moriarty has been a big name lately with the success of the adaptations of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers. Apples Never Fall opens after the matriarch of the Delaney family has seemingly gone missing.
APPLES NEVER FALL
In 2034, the stakes were brutally clear, with millions of lives on the line. Two decades hence, they're mushier—serious to be sure, but tougher to wrap up into a thriller. With apologies to T. S. Eliot: This is the way the book ends / Not with a bang but a whimper. A game effort at a tough theme. 0.
Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Published: September 22, 2021. Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty is a unique mystery and family drama. Liane Moriarty is one of my favorite authors. Earlier this year, I ranked her best books and it was a lot of fun to take a look back at some of her previous novels. She already has such an impressive career!
Book Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Review: Simmering, cunning, and cleverly intricate! Apples Never Fall is a compelling, character-driven, domestic thriller that takes you into the lives of the Delaney family as they each grapple with sibling rivalry, enduring jealousy, resentments, and long-buried secrets when their matriarch disappears one day leaving behind only a garbled text message and a husband who seems suspiciously ...
Apples Never Fall
The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. But after 50 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? One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy's door, bleeding after a fight ...
Book Review of APPLES NEVER FALL
As with most Moriarty novels, Apples Never Fall contains family drama and secrets, with someone possibly concealing a murder. The Delaney family is full of sibling rivalry, a perhaps not-so-perfect marriage, and a lot of money that clearly doesn't buy happiness. And, tennis. A surprising amount of tennis.
Summary and reviews of Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
A perfect mix of humour, heartache and drama, Apples Never Fall is the ninth novel by best-selling Australian author, Liane Moriarty. When sixty-nine-year-old Joy Delaney goes missing on Valentine's Day after a garbled text message to her four children, they are understandably concerned, especially as certain things (an argument that morning, scratches on his cheek, a professional car clean ...
Apples Never Fall Book Review
The thing that Liane Moriarty absolutely excels at is characterization. She must be the most keen observer of the human condition, because she nails insightful - and accurate - idiosyncrasies that make each of her fictional creations feel truly real. Fair warning though that there is a lot of tennis in this book. A LOT.
Apples Never Fall: Recap, Spoilers & Chapter-by-Chapter Summary
Chapter-by-Chapter Summary. Prologue. The book opens on a Saturday morning. A car stops near an abandoned mint green bike with four green apples spilled over next to it. The driver gets out and puts the bike in his trunk. He plans on gifting it to his wife.
Apples Never Fall: Ending & Explanations (Spoilers)
It turns out that Savannah is the sibling of Harry Haddad, a former star student who is now a famous tennis player. She came to their house as a child once when her brother was being picked up, but she everyone was mean to her, and she was determined to exact revenge. In October, Savannah dropped the bombshell that Joy was the reason that Harry ...
Biggest changes between 'Apples Never Fall' book and TV series
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the book and the TV series Apples Never Fall. As fans of Liane Moriarty's family drama-cum-mystery novel Apples Never Fall tune in to the new Peacock ...
Apples Never Fall Summary and Study Guide
Apples Never Fall (2021), by veteran Australian novelist Liane Moriarty, begins as a mystery thriller: Joy Delaney, a 60-something mother and retired tennis coach, suddenly vanishes on Valentine's Day, and all signs point to her moody and volatile husband, Stan, himself a former world-renowned tennis coach, as the most likely killer. However, as the days pass and the police continue to ...
Alison Brie Reacts To The Apples Never Fall Ending, And How It Differs
Alison Brie is illuminating as the free-wheeling, high-strung mess Amy Delaney in Peacock's TV version of Liane Moriarty's popular novel Apples Never Fall.The story is so compelling not only ...
Apples Never Fall Ending & Spoilers from the Book, Revealed
Apples Never Fall Ending & Plot Summary Spoilers from the Book, Explained. Apples Never Fall's plot is full of secrets surrounding the Delaney family. Read on for a full breakdown of the novel, including its ending. Apples Never Fall is a popular novel by Liane Moriarty, who is also known for writing Big Little Lies, among others.
Apples Never Fall Serves Up Compelling Twists and Family Drama
Apples Never Fall's climax — and its last-minute return to the land of obtuseness — may leave some viewers dissatisfied, but the limited series is more about the journey than the destination. Anchored by rich performances from its ensemble cast, the efficient, handsomely made adaptation serves up family drama and high-stakes thrills in ...
Apples Never Fall
Book Details. From Liane Moriarty, the bestselling author of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers, comes Apples Never Fall, a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest. The Delaney family love one another dearly — it's just that sometimes they want to murder each other . . .
Apples Never Fall movie review (2024)
"Apples Never Fall" becomes a treatise on the ways we fail women, big and small, which shouldn't surprise as it's based on a book by Liane Moriarty of "Big Little Lies" fame. As the series moves about its plot—with a compelling mystery that remains open until the last episode—two tragedies compete in its framework.
'Apples Never Fall' review: Peacock series aims high but falls short
All Liane Moriarty book adaptations look alike. You have the famous cast, the mysterious setting, the time jumps, the infighting and, of course, the big (little) twists. But even with all the ...
'Apples Never Fall' Peacock Review: Stream It Or Skip It?
Based on Liane Moriarty's book of the same name (Moriarty is an executive producer, along with Bening; the writer and showrunner is Melanie Marnich), Apples Never Fall has the same semi-dreamy ...
Where can I watch 'Apples Never Fall'? Cast, plot and how to stream the
B ased on Liane Moriarty's 2021 novel, Apples Never Fall is a seven-part mystery drama miniseries which centers around the Delaney family and premiered on Peacock on March 14, 2024. Married ...

Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty review – overgarnished but pyrotechnic family drama

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In Liane Moriarty’s ‘Apples Never Fall,’ a mother disappears and a family falls to pieces

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Review: Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty

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