The Only One Left

Riley Sager

Mystery Thriller

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.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings.

My Opinion

(4.5 / 5) Have you read Verity by Colleen Hoover? I have. When I was finished I actually threw the book across the room because it made me so mad! I could not even sort my feelings well enough to write a review. This book has the same twisty, fabulous vibes without the anger I felt in Verity.

After a tragedy that leaves Kit reeling and her job in jeopardy, she is assigned to care for Lenora Hope. The Hope’s have been the talk of the town for years when three people in her family were brutally murdered many years ago. And yes, you guessed it, Lenora was the suspect.

Her guilt, or for that matter innocence, was never fully decided but the prejudices against her stayed. She is now mute and partially paralyzed living as a wealthy elderly woman with round-the-clock care.

Enter Kit. She takes the caregiver job with hesitance but it is 100% necessary for her to succeed if she is to continue in the health care field. She strikes up a friendship with Lenora and is able to communicate through a typewriter. What Lenora tells her puts both of their lives in danger and makes them question everyone. The twists that arise are fast, confusing (in a good way) and unpredictable. Big hands up for this one, those twists kept me guessing!

Go into this one blind, you will thank me later for not giving you more details!

General content summary: F words= 6, language

Story of young woman hanging her sibling, and stabbed her father, killed her mother (some details, blood)

Intimacy (referenced, no details, virginity)

Suicide (previous, suspected, pills, few details, overdose death 2x, hanging attempted suicide)

Laudanum (previous drug, multiple)

Alcohol

Ouiji board (brief)

Child sees parent during intercourse (few details, infidelity, previous)

Copse found (few details)

Pregnancy and birth and adoption (previous)

LGBTQ m/m relationship (previous)

Thank you to Penguin Random House Audio for the copy!

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