This book has more twists and turns than the twistiest rollercoaster in the world! From about three-quarters of the way in, there were just more and more and more, and I didn’t see any of them coming! Nope! Not one!
The descriptions are vivid, and the atmosphere throughout is dark and tense. I could feel all the creaks of the house, and the crashing of the waves as they battered against the rocks below.
This is my first book by Riley Sager. I have heard so many good things about him that I was glad I had the opportunity to read this one.
Yes, there were things that maybe shouldn’t have been possible, but none of these were things I thought too much about as I was reading. Go with the flow. Don’t worry too much about what might have happened in real life, and just lose yourself in the book. That’s what I did and lost myself for a good couple of days!
Thank you to #acrossthepondbookclub for choosing The Only One Left by Riley Sager as October’s book to read.
About the Book
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.
About Riley
Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, most recently Survive the Night and The House Across the Lake. His first novel, Final Girls, has been published in 30 countries and won the ITW Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel. His latest book, The Only One Left, will be published in 2023 by Dutton Books.
A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
