The Only One Left by Riley Sager: An Honest Review
Some books are easy to put down at the end of the day. The Only One Left is not one of them.
Riley Sager’s 2023 gothic thriller takes us to a crumbling mansion on the Maine coast, where a disgraced caregiver, a woman who hasn’t spoken in decades, and a decades-old family murder are all connected by secrets that refuse to stay buried.
It’s atmospheric, twisty, and exactly the kind of book that makes you think you have everything figured out—only to turn the page and realize you probably don’t.
Here’s my spoiler-light take on The Only One Left and whether I think it’s worth adding to your reading list.
The Book at a Glance
Author: Riley Sager
Genre: Gothic Thriller / Mystery
Published: June 2023, Dutton
Pages: 383 pages*
*Page count may vary by edition.
What the Only One Left Is About
Kit McDeere is a disgraced in-home caregiver who has been suspended after a patient dies under her watch. Desperate for work, she accepts a position that nobody else seems willing to take: caring for Lenora Hope, an elderly woman who has lived for decades inside a mysterious cliffside mansion.
Lenora has a notorious past.
In 1929, her parents and younger sister were murdered inside the Hope family home. Lenora, just seventeen at the time, was the only survivor. She was never convicted, but suspicion surrounding her never disappeared. She also never told anyone what really happened.
And now, decades later, Lenora still hasn’t spoken.
When Kit begins helping Lenora communicate her version of the events through a typewriter, the story of that long-ago night starts to come back to life. The more Kit learns, the more she begins to question everything she thought she knew about the Hope family and the people who have spent decades trying to uncover their secrets.
What starts as a caregiving job quickly becomes something much more complicated.
There’s the old murder case, the mysterious disappearance of a previous caregiver, and a house that seems to have more secrets than rooms.
What I Liked
The Atmosphere
This is probably my favorite part of the book.
The Hope family mansion feels like a character all on its own. It’s isolated, weathered, and filled with the kind of dark history that makes you expect something unsettling to happen every time Kit walks into another room.
If you love gothic settings, old houses, family secrets, and stories where the setting is almost as important as the characters, this one delivers.
The Pace
For a mystery with this many layers, The Only One Left moves surprisingly quickly.
There is always another question hanging over the story. Just when you think you’ve figured out what happened, another piece of information changes the picture.
It makes the book particularly easy to binge-read. This is definitely one of those “I’ll just read one more chapter” books.
And we all know how that usually ends.
The Characters
The women in this story are where much of the emotional weight lives.
Kit is flawed and complicated, and Lenora is fascinating precisely because so much about her remains uncertain. Neither character fits neatly into a simple hero-or-villain box, which makes their relationship one of the more interesting parts of the story.
Lenora, in particular, is the kind of character who stays with you after you close the book.
The Twists
Riley Sager clearly knows how to build a mystery around a series of revelations.
There are several twists throughout the story, and while some are easier to anticipate than others, the book does a good job of keeping you questioning what is actually true.
And when you think you’ve finally figured it out?
Well… maybe not.
What Didn’t Quite Work for Me
The Second Half Gets A Little Twist-Heavy
This is probably my biggest reservation.
The first part of the book builds its mystery beautifully. But as the story moves toward the ending, the revelations begin coming faster and faster.
For some readers, that will be exactly what they want from a Riley Sager thriller. For me, there were moments when I wondered if the story had one more twist than it actually needed.
A Few Plot Turns Ask You to Suspend Disbelief
Some of the later developments stretch believability a little more than the earlier parts of the story.
That isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker for a gothic thriller—sometimes you have to be willing to go along for the ride—but the final stretch asks the reader to accept quite a bit in a relatively short amount of time.
The Male Characters Feel Less Developed
The women drive this story, and that’s where most of the character development happens.
Compared with Kit and Lenora, some of the male characters feel less fully developed. They serve important roles in the story, but I found myself much more invested in the complicated women at the center of the mystery.
The Ending May Divide Readers
Without getting into spoilers, I’ll just say this: the ending goes big.
Really big.
Whether that works for you will probably depend on how much you enjoy a thriller that keeps escalating right up to the final pages. I appreciated the ambition, even if I wasn’t completely convinced by every part of it.
Final Verdict
So, is The Only One Left worth reading?
Yes, especially if you love atmospheric thrillers with gothic settings, complicated characters, and plenty of secrets.
It’s not a perfect mystery, and I did find some of the later twists a little harder to buy than the earlier ones. But the journey is genuinely gripping.
The combination of the isolated mansion, the decades-old murder, Kit’s complicated past, and Lenora’s mysterious silence creates exactly the kind of story that makes you want to keep reading just to find out what happened.
And that’s really what I want from a thriller. I want questions. I want theories.
I want to be convinced I’ve figured everything out and then be proven wrong.
The Only One Left delivers plenty of that.
My recommendation: If gothic mysteries, old houses, family secrets, and unreliable versions of the past are your kind of reading, put this one on your list.
Just don’t blame me if “one more chapter” turns into three hours of reading. Good weekend book binge.
Final Rating
★★★★☆ 4/5
Atmospheric, twisty, and highly bingeable, with a few late-story turns that may ask you to stretch your suspension of disbelief. Still, the mansion, the mystery, and Lenora Hope make this a memorable read.