Before I Forget

 

Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen

Fiction

2025

Finished on 3/22/2026

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A funny, heartfelt, late coming-of-age story that examines the role of memory in holding us back—and in moving us forward

Call it inertia. Call it a quarter-life crisis. Whatever you call it, Cricket Campbell is stuck. Despite working at a zeitgeist-y wellness company, the twenty-six-year-old feels anything but well. Still adrift after a tragedy that upended her world a decade ago, she has entered early adulthood under the weight of a new burden: her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

When Cricket’s older sister Nina announces it is time to move Arthur from his beloved Adirondack lake house into a memory-care facility, Cricket has a better idea. In returning home to become her father’s caretaker, she hopes to repair their strained relationship and shake herself out of her perma-funk. But even deeply familiar places can hold surprises.

As Cricket settles back into the family house at Catwood Pond―a place she once loved, but hasn’t visited since she was a teenager―she discovers that her father possesses a rare gift: as he loses his grasp of the past, he is increasingly able to predict the future. Before long, Arthur cements his reputation as an unlikely oracle, but for Cricket, believing in her father’s prophecies might also mean facing the most painful parts of her history. As she begins to remember who she once was, she uncovers a vital truth: the path forward often starts by going back.

I spotted a copy of Before I Forget on the new release shelf at my library and decided to give it a try. Other than the Alzheimer's premise, I went into the novel cold. Had I read the blurb, I might have thought twice about borrowing the book.

Before I Forget is no Still Alice. Hoen's novel deals with young love and loss, finding oneself, caregiving of an aging parent, and a new romance. Alzheimer's is a backdrop to Cricket's story, rather than being placed front and center. The specifics of her duties as her father's caregiver are simplistic: fixing a glass of lemonade; walking down to the lake with her father; driving him to restaurants or grocery shopping. The only indication of his dementia is his inability to recognize his daughters, and toward the end, climbing into a stranger's car. 

Before I Forget lacks the depth and nuance of Lisa Genova's brilliant novel about early-onset Alzheimer's. Genova's book informs her readers, evoking compassion and understanding of what it means to be afflicted with the disease, as well as how it affects family and loved ones. Hoen's novel, while dealing with the loss of a high school sweetheart, and a twenty-something-year-old floundering to find herself, is a lighter take on the family demands of Alzheimer's. Arthur's disease provides a backdrop to Cricket's return to the family home in the Adirondacks, which gives her a sense of purpose. 

Hoen's characterization and setting save the book from feeling trite and overtly simplistic. I had no trouble envisioning the cabin set nestled in the trees, overlooking the lake, the loons calling to one another at dusk. However, not one to believe in divination, I felt the subplot of Arthur's new found ability to predict the future, casting him in the role of a local oracle, more than ridiculous.

When I began reading this novel, I was hoping for a more meaningful, literary work, but despite its flaws, I was entertained enough to finish the book.