Book Review: The Only One Left by Riley Sager

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“At Hope’s End, the dominant night noises are the ocean and the wind — a discordant duet that keeps me awake. The waves are low and steady, crashing into the cliff below with a rhythm that would be soothing if not for the wind, which hits the house in irregular gusts. Each blow rattles the windows and shimmies the walls, which in turn creak and groan, reminding me where I am.

“A mansion teetering on the edge of the ocean.

“Inside of which is a woman most people assume murdered her family.

“A woman who has now offered to tell me everything.”

📚

The Only One Left is a historical gothic mystery/suspense/thriller set on the Maine coastline. Moving between present-day 1983 and 1929, the former storyline follows home healthcare aide Kit McDeere as she struggles with career-threatening accusations that have derailed both her personal and professional lives. After another health aide flees her assignment in the middle of the night, Kit gets a second chance and the opportunity to fill in, moving to Hope’s End — a decaying, cliffside mansion with a horrific and bloody history — to care for Lenora Hope, the reclusive woman suspected of massacring her entire family in 1929, when she was only 17.

Now in her 70s, mute, and wheelchair bound, Lenora’s movement is limited to one arm and her means of communication is restricted to tapping her hand and typing on an old typewriter. In spite of these constraints, Lenora offers to tell Kit her entire story, complete with the truth of what happened the night her family was murdered — an offer too tantalizing to refuse. But can Kit trust her? And what of the remaining Hope’s End staff, some of whom were employed at the time of the murders, and most of whom make Kit feel suspicious and uneasy?

Dealing with these doubts and tormented by her own dark history, Kit is immediately disoriented by the crumbling mansion, which lists dangerously toward the rapidly eroding cliffside. She also struggles with feelings of fear, morbid curiosity, suspicion, and repulsion when caring for Lenora. And when things start to go bump in the night, she has no choice but to get to the bottom of mysteries both past and present, or die trying.

The Only One Left is a wonderfully atmospheric tale replete with a setting that left me feeling sick and dizzy — a similar feeling I experienced while reading The Haunting of Hill House. The thought of living in a Gilded Age ruin so extremely tilted and so precariously perched on an eroding cliffside made me feel extremely anxious and nauseous. That coupled with the dark, moldering, ruinous, ticking-time-bomb state of the house was extremely effective, establishing an immediate and ever-present sense of tension, anxiety, and foreboding enhanced by the Hope family’s gruesome and mysterious history.

I’m not much of a suspense/thriller reader, but the gothic aspects of this novel, along with the plot description (likened to a Lizzie Borden-esque crime), and superb cover art had me onboard and pre-ordering this book from the first announcement. The story has a lot going on, and so many twists and turns that the reader ends up feeling a bit whiplashed, as though the book is too crazy and ridiculous to take seriously, but by the end I was along for the ride and thoroughly enjoyed myself. And while I did guess one of the twists, there are so many that I honestly don’t see how any reader could guess them all or feel like this was in any way a predictable story, which is a huge positive. This is an ominous, creepy, and fun book complete with a frame-worthy cover that I binge-read in a few sittings, and I’m glad I picked it up!

❤Amanda

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