4.0
The Only One Left
ByPublisher Description
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named a summer book to watch by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Oprah, Paste, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and Nerd Daily
"Propulsive ... a dizzying Gothic whodunit."
—New York Times Book Review
Bestselling author Riley Sager returns with a Gothic chiller about a young caregiver assigned to work for a woman accused of a Lizzie Borden-like massacre decades earlier.
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.
Named a summer book to watch by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Oprah, Paste, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and Nerd Daily
"Propulsive ... a dizzying Gothic whodunit."
—New York Times Book Review
Bestselling author Riley Sager returns with a Gothic chiller about a young caregiver assigned to work for a woman accused of a Lizzie Borden-like massacre decades earlier.
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities54436 Reviews
4.0
Jean Paul Mills
Created about 1 hour agoShare
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“When I picked up The Only One Left, I expected a solid thriller. But what I got was something even more layered and twisted than I imagined.
The story follows Kit, a home-health aide who ends up working in a crumbling mansion perched on a cliffside, caring for Lenora Hope—a woman accused of murdering her entire family decades ago. Lenora is now mute and paralyzed, communicating only by typing on an old typewriter. The atmosphere was gothic and eerie in all the best ways. I could practically hear the crashing waves and feel the suffocating weight of that house’s secrets.
I was all in for a moody thriller with a mysterious old house, a dark past, and a woman who may or may not have murdered her entire family decades ago. And yes, I got all of that—but I also got twist after twist that completely scrambled my brain.
From the get-go, the book leans into suspension of disbelief, and honestly, I was okay with that at first. But then came the second half. The last 50% was relentless—one shocking revelation after another, so many that they started to blur together. Everyone had a suspicious narrative, and just when you think you've clocked the likely culprit, the book throws you a completely out-of-the-ballpark twist that made me go, “Wait, what? From where did that come?!”
It felt like the plot kept pulling rugs out from under me just for the sake of shock value. I enjoy a clever twist, but here it started to feel like too much all at once. By the time I got to the final explanation of the why, who, and how, I was almost exhausted from trying to piece it all together. The resolution was… baffling. I found myself thinking, Why would anyone choose this? It just didn’t land for me in a way that made sense.
And oh, don’t get me started on the detective. I mean—was he really a detective? He missed everything. It was like his entire purpose was to be oblivious. Things were practically spelled out for him and he still managed to be completely useless. I found him more annoying than helpful, and that was a major miss for me.
That said, I loved the atmosphere—the house teetering on the edge of a cliff, slowly slipping into the ocean, was such a brilliant metaphor and visual. I kept waiting for it to literally fall apart, just like the story. The gothic vibes, the creeping eeriness, and that constant sense of decay were so well done. The spooky touch, the setting, and the pacing (at least in the beginning) really hooked me.
Overall, this book is probably perfect for readers who crave a lot happening all at once, who love shock value and don’t mind if the logic takes a backseat. But if you're someone who likes twists to feel earned and tied together cleanly, it might leave you scratching your head. Unusual, chaotic, sometimes gripping, sometimes frustrating—but definitely not forgettable.”
Bree
Created about 3 hours agoShare
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