The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Strangely, this is my first Riley Sager novel! It's a suspense type book. I think we could even say there's a twist or two in the book as well. Perhaps too much true crime on the brain, but the story set up reminds of Lizzy Borden. Let me explain. One of the main characters is named Lenore Hope and one night her whole family was murdered. A local nursery rhyme was created about how Lenore probably killed them all. This is similar to Lizzy Borden, who's father and stepmother were murdered one day and she was thought to be a possible suspect. A nursery rhyme also was created about that. 

Title: The Only One Left
Author: Riley Sager 
Page Number: 385 pages (hardcover)
Genre: thriller, mystery, suspense, fiction, gothic, horror
Publisher: Dutton
​Year: 2023

​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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I understand why this book is classified in the horror genre for most people, but I would place it within a gothic subgenre (of horror or suspense), probably of suspense. I don't have a reason for this, I just feel it leans more suspense than horror, but I suppose one person's suspense is another's horror. Also, I'm not a librarian so I don't have to worry about this. 

Kit McDeere is assigned a job at the Hope mansion in 1983. Kit has recently been on suspension because someone in her care died in a way that wasn't acceptable to the police and the agency. Kit was cleared, although we find out more about this death as the story progresses. Kit is down on her luck, no other place will hire her, so she takes the job at the Hope mansion. The Hope mansion is where all the Hope family, excepting Lenore Hope, were murdered in different ways one night in 1929 before the Great Depression. 

For me, this was a solid three star, I liked it but I will not re-read or keep it. I did pick it up thinking Sager was a lady author by the name (not his fault if his name is Riley) because I went through a bad phase of "men-writing-women" books (the boobily down the stairs trope) and I wanted to avoid that for a while. While Sager didn't lean that way in this book I felt that some of the decisions Kit makes are...not what a scared women would do. Kit can leave and go home anytime yet she'll stay and put herself in danger. It's odd. Anyways, I'll give Sager another go as I think I own Final Girls. 

I enjoyed the setting (no WIFI, no internet, no cell phones, etc.) which created more menace for the women at the house. I liked that Lenore could only communicate with the typewriter-slowly. The mansion falling into disrepair and neglect mirrors the decaying of Kit herself, as she comes to grip with her former patient and her relationship with her father. 

The build up was fun and sinister and then the twists and explanations started and that's where the book dropped rating wise for me. It was too....splattered? Like, I felt so many deus-ex-machine and random occurrences were ongoing just to press the story forward. The best way to explain it would be "Kit is 'A' except for the times were she's B, C, D, and Q, and on Tuesday she's Y."  I don't know if that makes sense. It takes away the air of suspense. I think when I shut the book, I just went "well....ok." It didn't stay with me and I wasn't impressed with the ending. 

There were also two different characters, one named Ricky and the other named Ricardo. Not the best as they're similar and also, "I Love Lucy" doesn't fit with this.