Book Review: The Only One Left by Riley Sager

February 20, 2024

I listened to this book, and had started it on the way back from visiting my family for Christmas, so it surprisingly took me a while to finish. Don’t let this fool you, though, this book was filled with mystery and intrigue. I usually try to figure out books right away, and most the time I am right, but this book surprised me and kept surprising me.

The last three hours of this book were a whirlwind of things coming together and learning things about characters that seemed to be minor until, suddenly, they weren't. None of the characters were really as minor as they seemed to be when the book began. Everything was twisted and connected in ways that I could have never predicted.

For a brief overview: Kit is our main character and we meet her shortly after she has been accused of allowing one of her patients to die on her watch. She is a caregiver, and is very good at it, but there is a lawsuit hanging over her head for something that she did not do. She is living in a house with her father, who wants little to nothing to do with her, and is on a forced leave from work after the loss of her patient. This leads her to take any any job that she can get with the care agency she works for. Little does she know that this means she is going to be working for the towns biggest wives tale: Lenora Hope. Lenora is so well known that the children in the town have a chant to tell her tale: At seventeen, Lenora Hope/Hung her sister with a rope/Stabbed her father with a knife/Took her mother's happy life/'It wasn't me,' Lenora said/But she's the only one not dead.

I am so impressed with this book and highly suggest it.