A crumbling mansion with hidden passageways and secret rooms makes a formidable backdrop in Kat Rosenfield's You Must Remember This, which skillfully explores dementia, family dynamics and greed. Rosenfield's second adult novel begins slowly, establishing the personalities and motives of each member of the dysfunctional Caravasios family in a realistic plot ramped up by an incisive mystery with a soupçon of the gothic.
To celebrate Christmas, 85-year-old Miriam's three adult children and granddaughter, Delphine Lockwood, bring her from an assisted living facility to the Whispers, her childhood home in Bar Harbor, Maine. Miriam's homecoming is rife with bickering by her children, each of whom expects to inherit a portion of her $20 million fortune. Only Delphine and Adam, Miriam's personal caregiver, seem to care about her. Miriam is suffering from accelerating dementia and has been near death for a while, so it's no surprise when it happens, but Delphine believes her grandmother may have been murdered. Those suspicions ramp up when details of Miriam's will are revealed.
Rosenfield (No One Will Miss Her; Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone) builds the novel's tension in the family's individual relationships with Miriam and with the house itself. To Delphine, Miriam is a loving grandmother with tales about a loving marriage cut short when her husband died in an accident when she was in her 30s. Miriam's three children have different opinions of their mother, who is often weighed down by her memories. The mansion's secret passageways, into which Miriam often disappears, also reflect her scattered mind. You Must Remember This delivers a haunting plot with surprises in every room. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer