“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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Publication Date: July 4th 2023
Content Warning: Moderate suicide, murder, death
I’m still relatively new to Riley Sager’s work, but he has yet to disappoint me.
Set in the early 1980s, The Only One Left tells the story of Kit McDeere as she finds herself giving care to the notorious Lenora Hope, accused of killing her entire family in 1929, aged only 17. Everyone seems to think that they know what happened that night, but Lenora wants to set the story straight and tell Kit the whole story the only way she can, by using a typewriter to tell her story.
After six months of leave, after a former patient died in her care, Kit is assigned to another who nobody else wants to care for as she is thought to have massacred her entire family 50 years earlier. Now, Lenora Hope is immobile and unable to speak after a series of strokes in her later life.
One thing that initially drew me to this book, apart from the author being Riley, was, of course, the setting. I would have picked this one up with no problem even if the author had been different. A so many years alter thriller set in a secluded and decaying mansion on a cliff? Yes, please! There is just something about these types of books that I know I’m going to devour and love before I even begin reading.
While there were parts, particularly the beginning, that were slow at times, I still think Riley’s writing style and his ability to keep you hooked is remarkable; it always makes me want to read more of his work, and I still have quite a bit of his previous work to get through, hopefully soon!
Of course, this is a book I’m going to be recommending to others. It has rightfully earned a place on my ever-growing ’10 Years Later’ thrillers.
Thank you to Hodder Books for the ARC!
All the love,
Jade x
Tea Stains and Book Spines 