Pick up a copy here: https://amzn.to/48OdWoa – I may stick to pronouncing it Say-Guhr! I’ve heard a few interviews since and this is how it is said almost always when people speak with him.
If this isn’t a nouveau gothic, I don’t want to know what is. Truly. I had a lot of fun with this and if you are not having fun with fiction then…
Why did I choose this book?
The title of this book and the cover combined caught my eye. I’m not a huge fan of this orangish red and blue color combination but I do like a book with a house on the cover. The Only One Left as a title evokes a sort of gothic feel, some sort of familicide perhaps had gone on and that turned out to be true. The front cover with its colors evoked the title of a short story from ages ago ‘Orange is for Anguish Blue for Insanity’ and I figured this would have to do with some sort of perhaps unreliable narrator which wasn’t exactly the case. But be that as it may, the cover and the title of this book along with some of the pedigree of the author did its work to entice me to read it. I’d never read any Riley Sager and I figured this would be a good spot to start. Will I read more Riley Sager? Maybe.
What is Hope’s End like?
Based in 1983 the story covers the murders that took place in 1929 at Hope’s End, a mansion on the edge of a cliff by the ocean. The only one left as the title may have you understand is Lenora Hope, a 70-some-year-old heiress to some sort of new and old money fortune. So the story takes place in Maine which is pretty fitting I think for the East Coast because it’s gloomy, it’s cold and this cliff that the house is built on is crumbling into the ocean and I feel that that’s a very East Coast thing to do. We don’t leave the mansion much and that’s my favourite thing about these sort of nouveau gothics where it’s a woman in an attic in a house on the seaside that is crumbling into the ocean I’ve had many nightmares of settings just like this and this lived up to those nightmares just fine. I thoroughly enjoyed the opulence of the mansion even though it is not dripping with gargoyles and crystal chandeliers, it boasts sky-high oil paintings and huge stairways that go off to the various wings there are several floors we don’t explore and I don’t think we ever end up in the basement but it is this big mansion with its modern comforts. Because it’s the ’80s there are no cell phones, no blogs or podcasts and cable TV so that’s really refreshing. I think that this solves the problem that authors might have of what to do with today’s technology that can get you out of so many jams that are fun to put main characters in so these main characters get in those jams that technology would bail them out of far too easily.
Who is Kit McDeere?
The main character of the story is of course I think Lenora Hope – really honestly – but truth be told it’s about Kit McDeere who has had her name dragged through the mud. As a caregiver, when her own mother fell ill, she volunteered to take care of her until the end of her days. This turned out to be a highly suspicious suicide by fentanyl… or was it murder? These are the questions that we are toying with as the reader that the writer dangles throughout the story and I could see this being a little bit frustrating to some people. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I liked not knowing where we sat with Kit, and I liked not knowing what the truth was at first. I liked the way that you could read people’s reactions several ways and I think that that really speaks to real life where you’re not sure of what people are capable of and you can never be sure what people’s reactions truly mean. There are a lot of characters named Ricky Richard Dick and Patrick later on in the story which might create a little bit of red herring situation. I found that kind of fun and while they weren’t cartoonish they were just kind of natural red herrings. I wouldn’t call the writing of these characters masterful or wholly intriguing, just quite natural and on one hand you could say that you’ve never met someone as wishy-washy as Kit McDeere but I’ll bet you have.
Other characters in the house Include Ms Baker who is the governess or housewoman who takes care of all of Ms Hope’s affairs, Jessie who is the housemaid and Carter who is a handyman of sorts there’s also a wonderful cook who has been with the family as long as Ms Baker named Archie. Secondary characters that round out the plot of course like Kit’s deceased mother who is mentioned, her father who is very much alive and a little bit estranged, this detective that had dealt with the case of Kit before she was reinstated as a caregiver with her name was somewhat cleared.
We get this mirror between the two women’s stories. Their names can never be truly cleared in a small town. Kit has been all over the news, everybody knows what she did, and everyone suspects the worst. It seems people have their own story about Kit’s mother made up in their minds. The same with Lenora Hope who has a rhyme that kids say on the schoolyard for the past 50 years. That story is very ‘Lizzie Borden’; that she’s this murderous girl living up in this mansion and has gone total hermit. Some people don’t even know if she’s still alive… so a very small town and so very 1929.
What highlights spoke to me?
The introduction of the characters and such here has pretty much rounded up the plot. Kit McDeere is hired to go and take care of Lenora Hope the aging, possibly murderous heiress to the Hope family fortune and estate, Hope’s End. Where the story really gets meaty and one of my favourite things about this is the typewriter that Lenora Hope uses to communicate. To some this typewriter is a secret, to some this typewriter is the ultimate answer to the questions that everyone is asking: did Lenora hope to murder her whole family in 1929? It isn’t too long into the story until we realize that Kit is replacing the missing nurse Mary who had left suddenly a week previous so there are a lot of little mysteries to solve. I enjoy the very simple plot of the story not even a who done it. It’s partially a whodunit, and it’s who didn’t do it without any who’s going to do it… the one question I don/y usually like is who’s going to do it. Nobody does. It’s great. There’s not even a Mulder and Scully level of sexual tension within this book there’s none of that so for those who don’t like reading a lot of sex on the page this is a great one. There are mentions of adult situations that are kind of funny to me with a tertiary character named Kenny that lives next door to Kit but other than that it’s pretty tame.
Another tactic used in this that I enjoy is this ‘ticking clock’. if you also like those sorts of plots where time is running out. Poison coursing through the spy’s system and they need to get to the antidote and figure out who poisoned them, or more famously in Stephen King’s The Shining. The boiler in the Overlook being forgotten by Jack but very much remembered by the readers that the whole place could blow at any moment is a very literal ticking time bomb. That sort of feeling weaves through the story because there are cracks in the foundation. Not just in character psyche but this literal house itself. New cracks appear in the walls the second day we spend there with Kit. That real fear sets in that this whole house could come crumbling into the ocean any minute and it’s used to good effect. There is a lot of criticism about this book because it is a little bit unbelievable, a little bonkers and things like the red herrings and the surreal situation that Kit finds herself in after what it seems to have been a pretty dishwater drab life up until this point could be pretty unbelievable. The typewriter could be pretty unbelievable. That finances to run this house hadn’t dried up a decade ago makes no sense. A lot of these little plot points remind me of daytime soap operas that can be fantastically unbelievable but I do hang my hat on the things that I can get behind. Having grown up in a murder house knowing that people can do awful awful things and having grown up down the road from a murder house that I didn’t know much about proved people can think up awful awful things. Those are the two truths of the story that ring out for me.
In conclusion…
The Only One Left is a thriller of course rather than a horror. it’s marketed as a thriller and it came as part of my book of the month club and that’s part of why I’m reading a thriller because they don’t really do horror as far as I’ve seen anymore at BOTM. It’s a fun thriller-crime-murder fiction that edges on horror in a way because it does have these sneaking around probably haunted mansions at night. While not being super rooted in horror as far as terrifying scenes or grotesque scenes it does have a horrific premise. if you are a fan of Darcy Coates books or if you are a fan of the old VC Andrews I think that this is a really good modern addition to that sort of library. This is also really handy for horror fans who like to dip into thrillers once in a while. It’s very useful in that respect, as a cleanse palate.
I’m a huge fan of these sorts of stories in real life. If this were on the news I would absolutely be riveted.
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I talk horror books; extreme horror, classic, slasher, gothic, and everything in between. Helping you find the next best horror book to read is the goal, and sharing new and old horror from my shelves and new releases is how! Horror, nonfiction and even true crime can be found here as I find that human beings are the scariest thing of all.
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