Review: The Only One Left

3/5 stars

The Only One Left, by Riley Sager (2023)

Kit McDeere is a home health aide, currently living at home with her father after her latest client overdosed on meds while under her care. Finishing up a 6-month suspension, she's given the opportunity for another job - one that no one else wants. Warily, she accepts (anything to get away from her father, who has given her the silent treatment the entire time she's been home). The job is to take care of Lenora Hope, a woman in her 70s paralyzed from multiple strokes. Lenora lives in a once elegant mansion, called Hope's End, on the coast of Maine. It is now falling into disrepair, and, quite literally, falling into the ocean - the cliff beside and below the home is crumbling, leaving the house in imminent peril. But that's not why no one wants this job. The reason is that Lenora Hope is the sole survivor - and main suspect - in "The Hope Family Massacre," in which her father, mother, and sister were found dead inside the home.

As someone who has been accused of negligent homicide, Kit wants to give Lenora the benefit of the doubt. She soon learns that while Lenora's body is mostly paralyzed, she is still in control of her mental faculties, and she wants to use her one remaining functional hand to type out the true story of what happened all those years ago.

What follows is a very, very complicated web of lies, murder, attempted suicide, mistaken identity, surprise familial connections, and, as already noted, a house on the brink of tumbling off a cliff.

The premise is great, and I really enjoyed the majority of the book. By the end, however, it was so twisty and convoluted, and there were so many coincidences... Less is more (or, should have been) in this situation. Everything is turned on its head so many times that it just became a confusing mess (and, as if that weren't enough, there is an error with a pronoun that made me think I was totally wrong in my understanding of things, but actually it was just a maddening typo!).

There were some very fun reveals that I liked, but after a while - implausible reveal after outlandish reveal - it was too much, and went on for too long. Still, I'm giving it 3 stars because it was a lot of fun for 3/4 of the novel.

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UP NEXT: The Enigma of Room 622, by Joël Dicker