Authors I've Been Meaning to Read - The Only One Left by Riley Sager

At the beginning of the year I made a list of authors that I've been saying I need to read and commit to reading at least one book by each of the authors in 2024.  Here's my thoughts on one of those books/authors.

Goodreads: The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Blurb:  

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.

My Thoughts:  This was my first book by Riley Sager and it won't be my last.  I loved the premise and the setting.  The house's precarious grip on the cliff and the slow tilt of the house really increased the suffocating feeling of the read.  I was never fully sure if I could trust Kit's version of events but I did like her and could sympathize with her need to understand what's going on.  They mystery into just what's going on at Hope's End and what happened so long ago kept me hooked and while I guessed a few bits of the end I had no real clue what all had happened.  I listened to the audio version of this book and it made for a great listen!  My Rating: Really Liked It (4 Stars)