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The Only One Left

Pages
383
Published
2023
Language
English

Synopsis

In 1983, home health aide Kit McDeere is sent to Hope's End, a decaying mansion perched on the eroding cliffs of the Maine coast. Her new patient is Lenora Hope, an elderly woman who is mute, confined to a wheelchair, and infamous: in 1929, when she was seventeen, her entire family was murdered at Hope's End, and although the police were never able to prove she did it, the rumour has followed her for more than fifty years.

Unable to speak, Lenora communicates by tapping out words on an old typewriter, and one night she offers to tell Kit exactly what happened. As her typed account of 1929 unspools alongside Kit's own days in the house, the details begin to contradict one another — and Kit, who came to Hope's End carrying a disgrace of her own, grows steadily less certain that anyone there can be trusted, least of all the woman she was hired to care for.

Riley Sager's Gothic thriller braids 1929 and 1983 into a twisting mystery about guilt, memory, inheritance, and the stories people tell in order to survive them.

25 reviews

How it reads

  • Writing
    3.0
  • Impact
    2.5
  • Characters
    2.5
  • Plot
    4.0
  • Atmosphere
    3.0
Prose complexity 4/10
Content warnings (2)
ViolenceDeath Of A Parent
Readers say (1)Fast · Moderate · Mysterious · Atmospheric · Tense · Family Saga · Marriage of Convenience
Readers flagged (4)
Sexual ContentViolenceGraphic ViolenceSuicide

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