Have you ever wondered whose side you would take if your parents divorced? Perhaps you don’t have to wonder, and you know innately which side to support. What if the question is a bit more sinister – would you support your father if he was the prime suspect in your mother’s murder?

This is the question that four grown children must ask themselves as they unravel the mystery of their mother’s suspicious disappearance.

Joy (mom) has been missing for about a week, and her children are beginning to wonder if something may have happened. They received a very garbled message on her day of disappearance stating she was going off grid for a few weeks. A garbled message is not out of the ordinary if Joy is not wearing her glasses, but going off grid with little notice is very unusual. To top things off, Joy and her husband of 50 years had a massive argument just before Joy went “off grid”. The police begin to question the nature of her disappearance after two of Joy’s children report her missing.

Each chapter takes the perspective of one of our main characters, mostly of the four grown children. All four of them have very unique personalities and quirks, seemingly all derived from their parents’ forceful opinion that they should all take up the family sport of tennis. Joy and Stan (the husband) owned a tennis academy and expected all of their kids to excel in the sport. The novel is very tennis heavy, but you don’t necessarily need to enjoy tennis to enjoy the story line.

Liane takes us through the timeline of Joy’s disappearance and unveils some dark truths about the past for each character. The book keeps us on our toes through most of the plot line and ends with a bang. I did feel that there were parts and instances that went a bit too far into the thoughts and feeling of the characters, without enough action to balance things out and move the story forward. So, I did find myself skimming through some chapters for a couple of the characters I didn’t love. Particularly that of Savannah, an antagonist that is introduced about halfway through the novel. She shows up unexpectedly as a house guest of Joy and Stan, but quickly becomes a bit of a menace to the other children. While her character adds a bit of curiosity and intrigue to the story line, I did not enjoy Savannah’s history or thought process as much as some of the others. Her character build was a bit too eccentric for my liking.

Apples Never Fall is an entertaining read and has some small bits of humor and mystery to keep the reader engaged. It’s a light read for summer, but not necessarily a curl up by the fire and read once a year type of novel for me. I’d say it’s an average fiction to pass the time.