Is there an audiobook of The Only One Left?

Yes. The Only One Left has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Christine Lakin and Dawn Harvey.

How long is the The Only One Left audiobook?

The The Only One Left audiobook runs 12 hr 32 min.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager book cover for the Book of the Day thriller book review

Our score

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to The Only One Left free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDJune 2023

Genres

Fiction Thriller Gothic

Themes

An unreliable narrator you cannot cross-examineMurder, and a family that never got its answerReputation, and what a town decides about youTrauma carried by the last survivorClass, and the staff who see everything

The Only One Left

Name: The Only One Left
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Riley Sager

Riley Sager

Riley Sager's The Only One Left drops a disgraced home-health aide into a Maine cliffside mansion to nurse the woman blamed for a 1929 family massacre, a stroke survivor who can answer only on a typewriter. A gothic whodunit with a genuinely fair central twist and a collapsing house doing half the work.

The Review

Our take

The whole book rests on one question: can a woman who cannot speak still lie to you? Sager builds four hundred pages on it. Lenora Hope is seventy-one, mute since a run of strokes, paralyzed down one side, working exactly one hand and one manual typewriter. Whatever she has to say about the night in 1929 when the rest of her family died, she says it a letter at a time. That constraint is the smartest thing in the novel. A confession delivered at typing speed can be shaped before it lands. It can also stop mid-sentence, and Sager knows the exact moment to stop it.

Hope's End is sliding into the Atlantic. Not as a figure of speech. The east wing already went over the cliff, the floors run downhill toward open water, and a dropped marble finds the seaward wall without help. Sager leans on the decay hard and gets away with it, because the house is load-bearing rather than decorative. Everyone inside is waiting for something to give. The year is 1983, which puts a rotary phone and a long gravel drive between Kit McDeere and any assistance she might want. She took the job because nobody else would hire her. A patient died on her watch a year ago, and her town has already settled on what that means.

The structure alternates. Kit's 1983, then installments of Lenora's typed account of 1929, paid out the way a dealer pays out chips. What that does to a reader's suspicion is the pleasure of the thing. Somewhere past the midpoint the manuscript stops reading like testimony and starts reading like a document with an author, and every omission in it turns into a choice somebody made. The nurse who fled in the night left her suitcase behind. Kit finds it. After that, the staff's movements get timed rather than merely noticed, and the housekeeper's habit of appearing in doorways acquires a new flavor.

The first third moves slower than the premise deserves. Sager spends a long stretch establishing the house and Kit's disgrace before the machine starts turning, and anyone who came for the massacre will make a lot of beds first. Then the back half arrives all at once. Nearly every member of the household turns out to be carrying a reveal, which is at least one reveal past the point of usefulness, and the last forty pages fire several in a row. Taken alone, each works. Stacked, they read like a magician going into a fifth trick after the applause has already started.

Why you should read

Fans of gothic suspense set in a crumbling house
Readers who like dual timelines and found documents
Anyone who wants a twist that plays fair
Silent Patient readers hunting the next unreliable narrator

What to expect

A slow first third, then a very fast back half
Alternating 1983 and 1929 timelines
Several reveals stacked into the final chapters
Atmosphere and dread rather than gore

The central turn is fair. Every component of it sits on the page well before the reveal, planted in the schoolyard rhyme the local children chant and in the way the typed account keeps declining to use certain names, and going back through the first hundred pages afterward pays off properly. The reversals that follow are a different grade of work. At least one operates by withholding rather than by misdirection, which is the cheaper instrument, and Sager is good enough to know it. Setup honored, then over-serviced. What stays afterward is the house: tilting floors, a locked-off wing, salt in the plaster, and one old typewriter that only tells you what its owner decides to type.

Reviewed by Quinn · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.5/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to The Only One Left free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The Only One Left?: Yes. The Only One Left has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Christine Lakin and Dawn Harvey.
Listen to The Only One Left free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the The Only One Left audiobook?: The The Only One Left audiobook runs 12 hr 32 min.
How much does The Only One Left cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $9.99, Paperback $9.57, Hardcover $9.57. Prices as of August 26, 2026 at 3:46 AM EDT and may change.

Filed underThriller Gothic Browse the archive →

More by Riley SagerSee every Riley Sager book we've reviewed, with our scores.All Riley Sager books →

Common questions

What is The Only One Left about?: The whole book rests on one question: can a woman who cannot speak still lie to you? Sager builds four hundred pages on it. Lenora Hope is seventy-one, mute since a run of strokes, paralyzed down one side, working exactly one hand and one manual typewriter. Whatever she has to say about the night…
Is The Only One Left worth reading?: We scored The Only One Left 4.5 out of 5. Riley Sager's The Only One Left drops a disgraced home-health aide into a Maine cliffside mansion to nurse the woman blamed for a 1929 family massacre, a stroke survivor who can answer only on a typewriter. A gothic whodunit with a genuinely fair central twist and a collapsing…