5⭐
Genre ~ family life fiction, coming of age
Setting ~ New York
Publication date ~ December 2, 2025
Publisher ~ Macmillan Audio
Est Page Count ~ 288 (54 chapters)
Audio length ~ 9 hours 11 minutes
Narrator ~ Barrie Kreinik
POV ~ single 1st
Featuring ~ dual timeline, parent with Alzheimers
My review:
If you have read my reviews before you might know that I’m scared of getting Alzheimers. More so scared for my daughter than for myself and here we have a daughter, Cricket, choosing to become a caregiver for her father, Arthur (74). She’s only 26 and still trying to figure her own life out. As she spends time at the lake house in the Adirondacks, a place that holds painful memories, she’ll come to find her way.
We get a story of patience and making the most of the time you have left while you can. They create a phenomenon that people travel far and wide to experience. Arthur sounded like a truly lovely person in both the flashbacks and in the present.
Overall, just heartbreakingly lovely.
Narration notes:
She did a wonderful job.
Purchase link: https://amzn.to/3M8BKwy
Add to your never ending TBR ~ goodreads
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it.
Book blurb:
Call it inertia. Call it a quarter-life crisis. Whatever you call it, Cricket Campbell is stuck. Despite working at a zeitgeisty wellness company, the 26-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.
With laugh-out-loud humor and profound grace, Before I Forget explores the nuances of family, the complexities of memory, and how sometimes, the people we know the best are the ones who surprise us the most.
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This sounds like a moving read – I absolutely share your fear. My Grandma had Alzheimer’s it’s an awful disease probably more so for those caring for a loved one
One of those reads that’ll stick with me 💞 Simply awful 🥹