The Only One Left Is a Gripping, Gothic Page-Turner

Riley Sager’s thrillers have a knack for keeping you reading, whether he’s indulging in the inner darkness of a point-of-view character or propelling you along through reveal after reveal in a twist-laden odyssey of gleeful horror. But there’s more to his books than all-out propulsion. Yes, Sager’s novels move like there’s rocket fuel baked into the pages, but he also has a gift for building layers of emotional reality into even his most shocking plots, ensuring that even when you’re not reading his characters’ latest ordeals, you’re thinking about them. The Only One Left, Sager’s latest thriller, is a prime example of his talent for blending the juicy and the thrilling with the deeply emotional. Full of breakneck turns and pacing that will leave you dizzy, it’s also a satisfyingly Gothic descent into the lives of two women who are trapped by perception, circumstance, and guilt, all while surrounded by a crumbling, suitably spooky old mansion.
With echoes of the Lizzie Borden trial, Sager’s novel begins with the story of the Hope family murders, a 1920s scandal in which almost every member of the wealthy clan was brutally slaughtered in the seaside mansion. All except one: Lenora Hope, who escaped conviction for the slayings and is now one of New England’s most infamous, and most reclusive, women.
It’s with this sense of lingering infamy in mind that Sager’s narrative picks up in the 1980s, as caregiver Kit McDeere heads to the Hope family mansion with a job offer to move in and become an aging Lenora’s full-time home health aid.
It’s not a job Kit actually relishes, particularly when she meets the stuffy housekeeper and realizes the mansion is slowly tipping into the sea thanks to years of erosion and neglect. But it is a job she needs, thanks to a darkness in her own past that left her falsely accused and carrying a constant burden of guilt. So she arrives at the mansion, aptly named Hope’s End, to meet this old, possibly murderous, woman who’s confined to a wheelchair and, thanks to a stroke, able to use only her left hand to communicate. Fortunately for Kit, Lenora Hope can still use a typewriter. And she’s ready to tell her story.