The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome back to another book review! Last year I read Final Girls by Riley Sager and became an instant fan. There was lots of hype for his new release The Only One Left and I of course had to pick it up. Riley has a distinctive writing style and I picked up on it having now checked out a second book by him. It’s definitely a winning style though, because I enjoyed this book a lot. So, let’s get into it!

Main Characters:

• Kit McDeere: A young home aid who is dealing with the aftermath of the loss of her mother when she is assigned to go work for Lenora Hope and is pulled into Lenora’s weird world
• Lenora Hope: Is famed for having been accused of murdering her entire family, and lives the rest of her life out in her family’s mansions after being left disabled from a stroke
• Ms. Baker: Long time staff to Lenora, is very overprotective when it comes to Lenora’s care
• Mary Milton: Lenora’s old care aid who is found dead on Lenora’s property after Kit arrives after is assumed she just cold quit her job and ran off

My Review

Since this book is such a recent release I won’t be getting into any spoilers in this review. It’s also such a good book that I would definitely recommend this as one worth checking out.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager is in his classic fashion a delectable murder mystery that is filled with suspicious and dynamic characters who pull you in. I gave the book an 8/10 rating. Kit McDeere is a young woman in 1983 battling with the grief and guilt from the loss of her mother. Having been her mother’s care aid during her illness, going back into doing care aid work professionally isn’t easy for her. Kit has an asshole boss who is looking to punish her in any way he can. He further executes this by sending her on an assignment to live with and take care of 70-year-old Lenora Hope. Lenora Hope is no average woman, living in a beautiful mansion in the richest area of the community, her life is anything but glamorous. Lenora has been shut into her home for 50+ years after her name was sullied when she was the main suspect in her entire family’s murder. After suffering a major stroke she is unable to move anything but her left arm. Kit of course isn’t excited about having to take care of a suspected mass murderer but desperate for money she takes the leap.

I found The Only One Left incredibly hard to put down once I started. Kit, while being a sweet and seemingly innocent character has a dark cloud over her that is hard to not give attention to. It’s hard to know what kind of person she is at times, and at others, you are rooting for her, she’s a complicated character for sure. While living in Lenora’s home Kit’s mental health definitely comes into question, and while it definitely doesn’t make her an unreliable character it does make you wonder if her perspective is accurate to what’s really going on. Kit while clearly being afraid of Lenora although she can’t physically hurt her, eventually she becomes a bit unhealthily obsessed with Lenora and her story. You can tell that it’s her way of processing her grief to become over-involved in Lenora’s.

While Kit is taking care of Lenora some weird things are going on in her home. Kit is surprised to learn that Lenora’s old care aide left her job in the middle of the night with no notice that she was leaving. It further perks her suspicions when Ms. Baker the long-time staff member of the home seems to give it no mind. Ms. Baker is obsessive over the care of Lenora and has a lot of very weird rules when it comes to it. Kit soon learns that Lenora is hiding a secret from everyone. With the ability to use her left hand, she and her old care aid Mary were typing out Lenora’s story. With Kit now there to take Mary’s place Lenora wants her to take over in other ways as well.

Lenora while unable to talk, does add in her own commentary in the book through her typed pages. Lenora’s commentary is all from the past but it’s expertly weaved in as we are told things in the present. I found Lenora to be a really interesting character. At times I was convinced she didn’t kill her family, and at others, I really wasn’t sure. She does a really good job throughout making it tough to get a real feel on who she actually is as a person. Kit furthermore is just as confused as we are as to whether or not she did it, but is desperate to find out. As Kit and Lenora work to put together her story it’s clear that someone doesn’t want Kit to find out the truth. But who and why?

This book really keeps you guessing throughout. With a cast of unreliable characters, it really is so hard to tell what comes next. The book is filled with tons of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming at all. Lenora’s secrets come at a price for many of the characters, but what that price is, and who is affected is hard to figure out as we go on. As it goes on it turns out that most characters are looking for something from Lenora and the Hope House and whether it’s fame or money many characters aren’t who they present themselves to be. I also really enjoyed the descriptive language used throughout the book. I am the type of visual reader who paints a picture in their heads of what’s going on. I could perfectly picture the cold dark mansion atop of a rocky mountain with salty waves crashing below. It set this classic setting in which we go through this cold unloved home that holds many secrets within its walls. The secrets don’t slow down when Kit finds the broken body of the old caregiver Mary bobbing in the rocks. Was Mary killed because Lenora was close to exposing the truth to her? Does this put Kit in danger as she and Lenora work towards the real story?

The only thing that I didn’t enjoy about this book was the very ending. It felt a bit blah for me given how the rest of the book was going. I feel like books like these are hard to get the perfect ending for so I didn’t hate it but I definitely didn’t love it. To a degree, it was just one of those endings where we spent the whole book building something up just for it to do a weird zig-zag at the last minute.

Overall I found this book to be one to defiantly check out. If you love a good mystery this is definitely one you need to add to the list. With the expansive plot and suspicious characters, it keeps you guessing the whole time.

Have you checked out The Only One Left or any of Riley Sager’s other works before? What did you think?

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