What makes a good whodunit? For me, it’s about how neatly the connections are made, how many details there are to catch…or miss… and how it can still keep you guessing till the end. Riley Sager’s The Only One Left takes all of the classic horror and thriller tropes and spins them into an intricate historical mystery. Below is my review of The Only One Left.
The Only One Left plot summary
We meet caregiver Kit McDeere’s as her six-month work suspension is coming to an end after a mishap with her last patient results in that patient’s death. She’s living at home with her father who has been giving her the silent treatment since the headline-making scandal. So, when her employer calls her with a new assignment, she’s eager to take it – until she finds out the name of her new patient, Maine’s own Lizzie Borden: Lenora Hope.
Back in 1929, Hope’s parents and sister were murdered in their sprawling mansion that was built on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Now in 1983, Kit is charged with caring for the suspected but never convicted killer, a woman whose body has been paralyzed by a series of health issues. Though physically harmless, Kit is put off by Lenora’s reputation and the rigidness of the staff who keeps the crumbling mansion running and secluded from the outside world.
Lenora is also unable to communicate other than by tapping her answers to yes or no questions with her only good hand. But then Kit discovers that Lenora can type if she holds Lenora’s hands over a typewriter. And Lenora begins to type her life story to Kit, spilling all of the details leading up to the truth of what actually went down on that fateful night.
The setting
Set in an old mansion, The Only One Left’s main setting brings with it a haunted house quality, from the sounds of footsteps at night to the bloodstains still embedded in the carpet on the Grand Staircase where matriarch Evangeline Hope bled out from her mortal knife wounds. I’m a sucker for haunted houses, and it’s a story element that will never get old for me.
We all dream of what it would be like to live in a mansion: these cold living spaces with a maze of rooms and hallways, intricately designed staircases and moldings, and furnished with antique furniture and wall art. It gives the author a ton of room in which to maneuver their main characters through while still providing the isolation and seclusion needed to set an eerie and dangerous tone.
But stories set in these homes often show the price that one must pay in order to earn that privilege, whether it’s being born into a corrupt family, marrying into one, or forming and maintaining one by any means necessary. It also requires a spotless reputation, one in which any hint of a scandal is swept under their ornate rugs and entraps its members and employees in a sea of lies, leading to desperate measures, as desperate as murder.
There’s no obligation to be a good person. The only obligation is not to get caught and to do what is required to keep from getting caught.
But the rumors catch up eventually, rather it’s from family members who break off from the family turned organization or the staff member who learns too much and feels the need to expose it. Hope’s End is literally crumbling away as Kit arrives at her new posting. And throughout the book, the cliff erodes and the house shifts more and more as Lenora shares her version of the events that led to the famous schoolyard song about her.
The characters
Kit is a flawed by likable character. Like Lenora, her reputation has been run through the rumor mill, and she is defined by one night of suspicious carelessness.
Yet, to the reader, Kit doesn’t come off as someone who is wracked with guilt. She mostly just feels sorry for the turn that her life has taken. Not that it was a remarkable one to begin with, having devoted the past 12 years of her life to caregiving with little else to take up her time. But it was a safe and respectable life, and most importantly, it allowed her to be independent.
Her mother’s fatal bout with cancer left Kit with her father who appears to be ashamed of her, despite allowing her to move home during her suspension. They avoid each other as Kit serves her time at home and her dad goes through his new routine as a widower. Like the Hopes, there is a lot not being said between the McDeere father and daughter, and there also seems to be a lot that Kit isn’t telling the reader.
So, although Hope’s End is not a particularly welcoming feel, it is populated with other secretive people and gives Kit a purpose again. However, it comes with a very strict set of rules that the hard-headed Kit has a hard time following.
From being made to wear a nurse’s uniform to being forbidden to allow Lenora outside, Kit is constantly bending these rules. And once she finds a slow but sure way of communicating with Lenora with the most accessible form of non-verbal communication of its time, a typewriter, she becomes obsessed with learning the truth of the rumors that have surrounded the most prominent family of her small town.
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The writing and the tone
The Only One Left is an easy, page-turning read that unfolds as Kit explains the twists and turns that come from her experiences while working for the Hope family. This is the first novel that I’ve read by Riley Sager, and I like his simple yet vivid descriptions and the pace of his writing.
He also writes female characters well, focusing on their humanity rather than worrying about making them strong fighters or damsels in distress. They are multifaceted beings. If anything, it’s the male characters who are underdeveloped as they seem to play very minor parts in the story.
However, this is essentially a story about how women of the past were mistreated and how their past actions came back to bite even their ancestors in the end. So, it only makes sense to put the female characters front and center and give them a voice in a time when they could finally speak – or at least type.
Setting the modern events in the 80’s was a particularly clever and well done decision. It didn’t seek out to pack in a bunch of 80’s references just for a nostalgic feel but rather to add to the intensity of the story by limiting its technological options.
In the back of my Walmart book club copy of the book, a Q&A is conducted with Sager in which he explains that he intentionally set the story in this time period because doing so kept our modern technology from weaseling in and being able to tie things up quickly. There are no cell phones, security cameras, or AI voice controls that better help Lenora to express herself, to try to catch suspicious people in the act, or to call for help when needed. It makes you realize how much harder it is to develop a mystery in this day and age and to heighten the danger and the stakes without disposing of our modern conveniences.
The plot
Overall, the story sticks to the blurb on the inside of its dust jacket. A good chunk of the story is told in flashbacks in Lenora’s typed account of the events that she is relaying to Kit as she helps guide her hands over the keys of the typewriter. And it unearths all of the family corruption and dysfunction and appears to set the record straight from someone who was there.
The story is very focused on the Hope murders. The other staff members at the decaying manor are equally curious yet more subtle about obtaining and sharing information with or keeping information from Kit. From the elderly cook, Archie, to the young maid, Jessica, the handsome groundskeeper, Carter, and the tyrannous Mrs. Baker, all have their own motivations for working at Hope’s End and for adhering to the rules that Mrs. Baker has set for them.
But it’s hard to know who to trust, especially when another individual is found dead on the property after Kit’s arrival. And it seems likely that it’s a member of the current staff who is behind this death, despite the investigating police detective ruling otherwise.
Even Lenora cannot be trusted, not only because of the accusations against her but because of her demeanor and her reputation among the staff that she can be manipulative. This leads to a staggering number of twists and turns that continue to alter the truth until the final pages.
The ending
Ultimately, The Only One Left is a thrill ride that puts a fictional spin on our true crime obsession. We’ll probably never solve the Borden murders, but with the right information, we’re able to see a similar crime exposed in the Hope murders.
Without giving anything away, the story wraps up unexpectedly and very melodramatically. A few of the elements came off as silly to me. As someone who writes with a cinematic lens, it feels wrong for me to berate a bestselling author for doing the same, but I feel like parts of the resolution were tied up like a blockbuster movie rather than a standard piece of literature.
Still, the story contains a lot of modern themes that are interesting to explore from these two eras of the past. Yet, Sager steers clear of the overused buzzwords that we use to explore these themes and manages to avoid jamming those messages down our throats. In this way, the story speaks for itself.
Every detail is paid off and every character plays into that payoff. Kit gets her catharsis, both for Lenora’s accusations and her own, and it’s hard to say that anyone lives happily ever after given what they have each gone through, but the victims get their due as do the villains.
If you have read The Only One Left, what did you think? Leave your answers in the comments, or email me at laura@laurasbooksandblogs.com.
My rating
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Love the sounds of this book! Thrillers are perfect autumn reads. 😊