The Only One Left by Riley Sager

At seventeen, Lenora Hope

Hung her sister with a rope

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife

Took her mother’s happy life

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said

But she’s the only one not dead

As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

My Verdict

This is a thriller that unravels the mystery through multiple perspectives. The first perspective is that of Kit, a newly reinstated caregiver whose suspension has put her on thin ice with her company and her father. She is assigned to care for a notorious recluse named Lenora Hope, who is believed to have killed her entire family in 1929 (but never charged due to lack of evidence), but is now wheelchair bound, paralyzed, and unable to speak due to a number of strokes. Facing few employment choices, Kit goes to live at the Hope estate, which is isolated on some cliffs above the Atlantic Ocean. As Kit cares for Lenora, and gets to know the staff and learn the history of the Hope family, she wonders if Lenora is who everyone thinks she is.. or if she’s much worse. The other perspective is the writings of Lenora, who is writing what happened to her in the months leading up the murders. There are so many smaller mysteries intertwined with the bigger overarching mystery, with questions about Kit as a caregiver, questions about what the strange noises she hears at night are, questions about why the staff has stayed for so long, and questions about what happened to the former caregiver, who seemingly ran off in the night.

With so many mysteries, there are bound to be hits and misses, and while I guessed a few of the surprises and reveals, I was also completely caught off guard by others. Sager knows how to divert attention, knows how to distract the reader, and knows how to bring together so many threads that seemingly have no meaning, only for them to be significant and surprising.

I also enjoyed how we had two perspectives that were both unreliable in their own ways: disgraced caregiver Kit, and potential murderer Lenora. The suspense builds up in a well paced way. I loved getting into both their heads liked how I would be thinking one truth about each of them one moment, and then second guessing myself another moment.

One issue I did have with this book was that Sager completely shifted the ending in last couple of pages in a way that changed everything for one last big twist. It just felt a bit too far. We had a pretty good ending in place. To totally upend the conclusion felt hollow to me, even if it is a bit more of a positive surprise.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, though, and I gave this one 4 stars.