Genre: Gothic Psychological Thriller Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5 Stars)
Riley Sager built a gothic mansion on a cliff, stuck two women with secrets inside it, gave one of them a typewriter to confess everything and then made you question every single word she typed. This book. Y’all. This book.
I went into The Only One Left genuinely unsure if it was going to deliver. BookTok has been screaming this book’s name for a long time and highly rated BookTok recommendations are a gamble. Sometimes they hit. Sometimes they are overhyped. I needed to know for myself.
It hit. Five stars. And I did not see a single thing coming.
My Honest Starting Point
I want to be real with you because I think it is important going in. It took me about 150 pages to really lock in. For a book that is almost 400 pages that might sound like a lot but there is so much story still ahead of you at that point that it is absolutely worth pushing through. Riley Sager is building something in those early pages. Laying foundations. Setting atmosphere. And once things start to move they do not stop.
Trust the process. Keep reading.
The Setup
It is 1983. Kit McDeere is a home health caregiver coming off a six month suspension after her last patient, her own mother, died under circumstances that were not clear. She has not been charged. But the suspicion is there and her reputation is destroyed.
So when her agency offers her a new placement she takes it because she does not have a lot of options.
The placement is at Hope’s End. A crumbling mansion on a cliff overlooking the ocean in Maine. Gorgeous and terrifying at the same time. Her patient is Lenora Hope, 71 years old, paralyzed, able to communicate only by tapping once for no and twice for yes.
And Lenora Hope is Maine’s version of Lizzie Borden.
Back in 1929 on the same night as the stock market crash her entire family was murdered inside that mansion. Her parents. Her sister. Lenora was the only one left. Never convicted. Never cleared. Just living in that house for fifty years under a cloud of suspicion that never lifted.
Now Kit is living there too. Taking care of the woman everyone believes is a killer. While the cliff the house sits on slowly erodes into the ocean beneath them.
What Makes This Book Work
The dual timeline is everything. We get 1983 through Kit’s narration and we get 1929 through journal entries that Lenora types to Kit on a typewriter, because that is the only way she can communicate beyond yes and no.
Sit with that for a moment. Lenora is typing her own confession. Telling Kit everything that happened that night in 1929. And the entire time you are reading you are asking yourself, can I actually trust this? She has spent fifty years under suspicion. She has every reason to shape this story a certain way. That is a narrator with motive and Riley Sager makes you feel that weight on every single page.
What makes it even more layered is the parallel between Kit and Lenora. Both women are accused of killing someone in their care. Both are living under a cloud of suspicion they cannot escape. Kit knows this. She knows she and Lenora are the same in this specific terrible way and that is what makes her stay. That is what makes her listen. And that is what makes you root for Lenora even when you are not sure you should.
Add in the gothic atmosphere, the crumbling mansion, the eroding cliff, the portraits of murdered family members covered in black fabric, the bloodstains that have never fully come out of the carpet and this book creates a reading environment that is completely unlike anything else I have picked up this year.
When Things Fall Apart
Here is what I will tell you without spoiling a single thing. When this book starts to unravel it does not unravel in one direction. It unravels in more ways than you will initially realize. Every layer you think you have figured out has something underneath it. And underneath that there is something else.
I had a theory. My theory was wrong. In the best possible way.
Riley Sager gave me every single piece of the puzzle and I still did not see how they fit together. That is the mark of a thriller done at an elite level, the clues are all there and you still cannot connect them the way the author intended until the exact moment they want you to.
The Thing I Loved Most
This book did not stop. There were several moments where the story could have ended. Where a lesser thriller would have wrapped things up and called it done. The Only One Left kept going. The twists kept coming. All the way to the final page.
I love that. I love when a thriller respects you enough to keep delivering. When it trusts that you are still with it and gives you more than you expected. The last forty percent of this book I was not okay and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.
Final Verdict
The Only One Left is one of the best thrillers I have read this year. Five stars without hesitation. The gothic atmosphere is unmatched, the dual timeline actually works which is genuinely rare, two unreliable narrators who are somehow both sympathetic and suspect, and twists that go all the way to the final page without once feeling cheap or forced.
If you have been sleeping on Riley Sager the way I was, wake up. This is your sign.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Have you read The Only One Left? Drop your rating in the comments and tell me, did your theory turn out to be right?
