"Apples Never Fall" by Liane Moriarty

I JUST REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK. I never wanted it to end, I was enjoying it so much. It was almost like a guilty pleasure, but I just couldn't stop reading, though it's inevitable that when that happens the book eventually ends. And so this one did. But oh, I had so much fun while it lasted! 

Sam and I (purely due to me being influenced by ads) had watched and enjoyed the TV series "Nine Perfect Strangers" last fall, which is based on a book by that title which was also written by Moriarty. So Sam gave me this book for Christmas (or was it for my birthday? they're close enough in time that sometimes they blend together) and what a perfect gift idea it was!

This was the story of Stan and Joy Delaney, recent retirees who sold their highly-successful tennis school a year ago and had since found themselves at loose ends. Their four grown children, each recovering from a childhood as a tennis prodigy, lead adult lives with varying degrees of success and happiness--lives which didn't necessarily match up with what their mother wanted for them. It was a mystery and a family drama infused with humor, but that describes the type of book that would normally make me want to vomit (well, maybe not the mystery part, but definitely the rest of it) though somehow this book evaded that fate. In fact, between the abrupt appearance of Savannah on the doorstep one night in September, contrasted with Joy's unexpected disappearance the following February, I was hooked (and no vomit in the forecast).  

As avid readers, I expect you all know about Chekov's gun? The playwright was known to have repeated on several occasions that if a gun is placed in a scene it must at some point be used. Well, it was not obvious from the very beginning (and that in itself is a good thing), but in Moriarty's book, nothing appeared that didn't later fit in as an integral piece of a very complex puzzle. One might think this could be annoying--having everything explained, nothing left vague, all the loose ends tied up so neatly with a bow--but instead it was so completely satisfying, and clever. The cleverness!! And it was all fair and above-board. There may have been misdirections, but there were no true red herrings.

When I was almost finished with this book, I was telling Sam about it and comparing it to the story of Nine Perfect Strangers. My take at the time was that the two stories were quite similar, with dark themes that somehow all ended happily. But that was before I read the last chapter of Apples. 

Shudder.