Jayme's Reviews > The Only One Left

I am starting to feel as if I am marooned on OUTLIER ISLAND 🏝️

It’s 1983, and home health aide Kit McDeere has just been cleared to return to work after a 6 month suspension she was given after a patient died on her watch. Pills that should have been locked up overnight were left within reach of the suffering woman.

Was it negligence, or did Kit assist the patient in taking her own life?

Her new assignment?

The one that nobody else will take, and the only one that she is being offered….to care for 71 year old, Leonora Hope, who in 1929, at the age of seventeen, was accused of killing both her parents and her sister in their cliffside home-although Police could never prove their case.

Leonora is now silent, bedridden, and has only partial use of one hand. Mrs. Baker, the dour housekeeper, assures Kit that no matter what Leonora may have done in the past, she is most certainly harmless now.

She instructs Kit on the very strict routine she will be expected to follow, and leads her to her room, so she can get started. It adjoins her patient’s, but still contains the uniforms and personal articles of her predecessor, Mary, who left suddenly in the night…

I LOVED the gothic atmosphere of the house that is tilting precariously above the crashing waves on a crumbling cliffside…

Kit discovers that Leonora can “type” or at least hit one key at a time on a typewriter, and that she wants to tell her story about that tragic night.

And, until the FINAL 💯 PAGES, I was LOVING this story….

BUT THEN…it got TOO TWISTY for my personal taste, relying on too many coincidences, and becoming too OTT. I did like certain PARTS of the final reveal but I feel like we could have gotten there on a much more plausible path.

Sometimes less is more, but this is the author’s second book in a row where he has taken the amount of twists further than he needed too-IMO.

Sigh.

So, here I sit (again) on Outlier Island 🏝️. I do hope that you enjoy this as much as many of my friends who have awarded it the full 5 stars. If not, I will be waiting . 🍹

3.5 ⭐️ (since I loved the first two thirds) but rounding down because the ending counts for a lot for me!

A buddy read with Mary Beth who LOVED all of the twists, so be sure to check out her review for another perspective!

Thank You to the Chandler Public Library for the loan.

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