The Only One Left by Riley Sager

I must have read about this novel, with its distinct gothic touch, on one of the blogs I follow. When something catches my interest, I usually download it—if available—through my Nextory app. This one turned out to be a surprising story that keeps you guessing until the very end. In other words, exactly the kind of story I love.

"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." (from Story Graph)

I was hooked from page one. Early on, there’s a reference to the Lizzie Borden murders of 1892, and in a way the setup feels similar: everyone is dead except for one person. Yet the police struggle to determine whether that person really did it. The narrative unfolds through two voices, Kit and Lenora, each revealing small pieces of what has happened—and what is still happening—until a fuller picture slowly forms.

As we delve deeper into the events, the atmosphere grows even darker. The house—built on a rock above the sea—is literally crumbling, leaning ever closer to disaster. And gradually, we learn the truth of what happened on a tragic day fifty years earlier.

It’s described as a gothic tale, and I think that fits well. Sager structures the story along parallel lines: the decaying house with its slanting floors and walls, worsening as the plot progresses, mirrors the two timelines unraveling fifty years apart. It’s all done with impressive skill.

I looked into Sager’s other novels and it seems he often writes what could be called horror. I’m not usually drawn to horror, but if it’s written the way it is here, I’m all for it. There’s an uneasy undertone throughout. Since I listened to most of it at night before sleep, there were a few evenings when I simply couldn’t continue—too atmospheric for the dark hours.

If you enjoy thrillers, murder mysteries, and gothic tales, this is definitely a book for you.