#Kit McDeere

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"La casa sulla scogliera" di Riley Sager. Misteri e segreti di una villa isolata: un thriller avvincente che intreccia passato e presente. Recensione di Alessandria today

"La casa sulla scogliera", di Riley Sager, è un thriller intenso e ricco di colpi di scena che tiene il lettore con il fiato sospeso fino all'ultima pagina.

“La casa sulla scogliera”, di Riley Sager, è un thriller intenso e ricco di colpi di scena che tiene il lettore con il fiato sospeso fino all’ultima pagina. La trama ruota attorno a un misterioso massacro avvenuto nel 1929 presso la dimora chiamata Hope’s End, situata su una scogliera battuta dal vento sulla costa del Maine. La giovane Lenora Hope, diciassettenne all’epoca, è sempre stata…

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At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. Stabbed her father with a knife Took her mother’s happy life It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything. “It wasn’t me,” Lenora said But she’s the only one not dead As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

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September 2023 Book Club Picks

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith: Cassandra Mortmain lives in a crumbling Suffolk castle with her penniless and eccentric family - her wild-tempered author father, her precocious younger brother, and her sensible older sister - recording their various misadventures in her diary. When two wealthy American brothers become their new landlords, Cassandra and her sister are immediately drawn to them, wondering if perhaps they've finally found an escape from their mundane lives.

Deborah Goes to Dover by Marion Chesney: Hannah Pym sets out once more for a glorious adventure, this time destined for Dover. Of course, what's an adventure with the infamous Traveling Matchmaker without matches to make? First, there's poor Abigail Cunningham, accompanied by her mother to be shuffled into a loveless marriage. Then there's tomboyish Deborah Western, encouraged to a life of lazy excess by her unruly twin brother William. Hannah isn't about to let two eligible ladies go astray, not when there are handsome eligible bachelors to pair them with!

The Only One Left by Riley Sager: Everyone knows the story of the Hope's End massacre - on a stormy, cold night in 1929, Lenora Hope systematically killed her whole family, stabbing her father and mother, and hanging her sister from the chandelier. Lenora swore she didn't do it and was never formally charged, but it had to be her. After all, she was the only one left. Fifty-four years later, Kit McDeere has been assigned to Hope's End as a caregiver after a series of strokes leaves Lenora almost totally immobilized, save her left hand. And one night, Lenora uses that left hand to plunk out a simple sentence on an old typewriter - I want to tell you everything. As Lenora tells Kit her story, it's clear that there's more to the story than anyone knows, and Kit begins to wonder how much she can trust this seemingly harmless woman.

Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer: Mary Tudor - Princess of Wales, only surviving child of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon - leads a life full of riches and admiration, destined to rule all of England one day. But vicious rumors begin to circulate through the court - King Henry's eyes have begun to wander, vexed that Catherine never provided him with a proper male heir. His sights land on the beautiful and ambitious Anne Boleyn, and turns his kingdom upside down to be allowed to marry her. Mary, only a child, is thrown into a dangerous world of political intrigue, spies, and love gone mad as her once-beloved father tears her life apart, strips her of her title, her home, and her mother, and declares her a bastard, unfit to inherit the throne. But Mary endures. After all, it is her destiny to rule one day.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: When her father loses the family savings on a risky investment, young Agnes Grey decides to easy her family's financial burden by taking a position as a governess to a wealthy family. Ecstatic at the thought that she has finally gained control and freedom over her own life, Agnes arrives at the Bloomfield mansion armed with confidence and purpose. The cruelty with which the family treat her however, slowly but surely strips the heroine of all dignity and belief in humanity.

[readingforsanity]

The Only One Left | Riley Sager | Published 2023 | *SPOILERS*

At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope.

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume 17-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope's End, the cliifside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife, Took her mothers happy life

It's now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrivs at a decaying Hope's End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer - I want to tell you everything.

It wasn't me, Lenora said, But she's the only one not dead.

As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there's more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor's departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth - and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

Kit McDeere, after having been accused of her mother's death from a fentanyl overdose, is back on the job as a home healthcare aide. Her boss, Mr. Gurlain, gives her the assignment that apparently no other aides want: to care for Lenora Hope, the only survivor of the massacre that resulted in the deaths of her sister, Virginia and parents, Winston and Evageline.

The job is an in-home job, therefore she will be living at Hope's End, where the murders occurred in 1929. Upon her arrival, she meets Mrs. Baker, the housekeeper, Jessie, a maid that also lives on the property, Carter who has taken the job as groundskeeper, Archie the cook and finally, Lenora herself. Lenora, after a bout of polio in her twenties has rendered her paralyzed, is also mute, though she does have use of her left hand.

The two begin to get to know one another. Kit reasons that the previous nurse left because she was scared of Virginia's possible ghost haunting the house, ultimately finds her at the bottom of the terrance just before the ocean meets the sand, apparently having jumped to her death. Kit doesn't believe this to be true, even after an apparent suicide note is found inside her pocket having survived several days in the water.

Carter confesses to Kit that Mary was helping him discover if he was Lenora's grandson. Apparently, Lenora had gotten pregnant by a man named Ricardo Mayhew, who was the groundskeeper at the time. His father had been left on the steps of a church on Christmas Day in 1929, around the time that Lenora would have given birth. Mary was tasked with helping him confirm this, by taking a blood sample from Lenora and Carter and sending it to a lab to be tested.

Believing that Mary had gotten down to the truth about what happened the night of the murders, Kit begins to beg Lenora for the truth. It is confirmed that there was a child born, though on Christmas Day was false.

It's also revealed at the end, after having located Ricardo Mayhew's wife living in the assisted care facility in town, that he had fallen in love with the beauty with blue eyes. Kit realizing that the Lenora she knows has bright green eyes, discovers the truth.

Mrs. Baker as we know her is in fact the real Lenora, and that the invalid woman in the upstairs bedroom is Virginia. Virginia had survived her suicide attempt but was apparently paralyzed from the damage done when she tried. Lenora left for a brief period of time, leaving Virginia in the care of Archie before returning and ultimately deciding to spend the rest of her remaining days at Hope's End. Archie also stayed, despite having the ability to leave, because he knew the secret.

Lenora decided to take over the identity of Mrs. Baker, who fled with Virginia's child the night the baby was born to Canada and was never seen nor heard from again, nor has Virginia's son ever come forward to introduce himself to the family. Ricardo, the man thought to have fathered Virginia's child, was actually Archie's lover, and the two had had plans to flee the night the murders took place, though he was never seen or heard from again either.

What had really happened was Lenora attempted to lock Virginia in her bedroom, a cruel game their father would play on them for a time in which Virginia always lost, to keep her from leaving. Virginia's water broke and her son arrived fairly quickly, the birth assisted by Miss Baker, as well as Lenora. Their father was also present. He told Lenora to take the baby from the room, and told Virginia that the baby was going to go away, as he refused to have another bastard in the house, as he knows that Lenora is not his biological daughter.

Virginia, filled with grief and regret over what has occurred, takes a knife and proceeds to follow her father into the billiards room. Lenora sees her, and attempts to stop her, but knowing that she will be unable to do so, gathers her mother, who for a brief period, arises from her laudanum stupor in order to put a stop to what is going on. Virginia enters the room, and Ricky, the boy who really is the father of her baby, has taken a $50,000 sum of money in order to remain quiet about what has transpired here, and will leave immediately. Virginia goes to attack her father, but is stopped by Evangeline, who does the murdering herself. Virginia doesn't see any of it, waiting for her mother on the grand staircase in the main foyer.

When her mother returns from the room, she has a stab wound to her side, which Virginia realizes is self-inflicted. Evangeline requests that Ricky put her out of her misery, though when he hesitates to do so, she talks him into it by belittling him. Afterwards, Virginia tells him to get out. Eventually, she finds herself in the ballroom of the house, deciding to end her life right then and there, only this fails.

In the end, the Ricky is discovered to be Kit's father, Patrick McDeere. He had worked at the house and had supposedly fallen in love with Virginia. When Mary was attempting to help Carter, she came to the house to request a blood sample from Patrick, and he complied, but ended up attacking her and shoving her over the terrace wall in order to keep her from revealing the truth.

Quickly returning to Hope's End to kee her father from further hurting the family, Kit finds him inside of Virginia's room, attempting to kill her by suffocation. But, Virginia, in a moment of rare strength, ends up stabbing him with a corkscrew in the side. It is then that the remains of Hope's End begins to fall into the Atlantic Ocean, the home having been tilting ever so slightly every day over the cliff wall to the ocean below.

When Patrick and Kit have helped Virginia get to safety, he and Lenora remain with the house, the two of them deciding to go with it, out of guilt: Lenora because of what she has made her sister do for the last 50 years while she was able to live her life the way she wanted, and Patrick for what transpired all those years ago.

Kit decides to have Virginia move in with her, and sets her up in her old bedroom. She has taken to living in the bedroom where her parents had once shared together. It was revealed prior to Patrick's death that while Kit was responsible for leaving the fentanyl out of its lockbox which is standard protocol in her line of work, a request her mother asked of her, insisting she will only take one if she needed to for pain, ended up with Patrick giving her the remaining pills inside the bottle in order to end her suffering of cancer. Kit was never guilty, but he was, in more ways than one.

When Kit returns from a shower to ask Virginia a question, she finds the bedroom empty, Virginia having left. She sends her a letter later from Paris, explaining that she has also been lying all these years, with her ability to walk, talk and everything else that any other normal person can. She went along with the ruse because she wanted Lenora to suffer like she had all those years before, essentially keeping her own sister prisoner inside the house as well for the last 50 years. It turns out that Jessie, the maid, is her granddaughter, her father being the son that Miss Baker had taken away so long ago.

Both Miss Baker is now dead, though Virginia wishes she could thank her for taking care of her son, who is now dead, having died just a year or two before Jessie came to work at the house. The night she disappeared from Kit's house, Jessie arrived to take her away, to do all the things she never got to do for the last several, several years.

At the end of the story, we see that Virginia Hope, who's true identity was revealed after the collapse of Hope's End, lived to be 101 and was living in Rome at the time of her death, off the Amalfi Coast. She wrote a memoir of her life story, and seemed to enjoy the celebrity she acquired. In the end, she was survived by Jessie, and a great-grandchild named after Mary, and Kit, who spent many years traveling with her.

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REVIEW: The Only One Left by Riley Sager

5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“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”

This was my first Riley Sager novel, and it was amazing! 

The story takes place in 1983, following Kit McDeere, a somewhat disgraced assisted living aide who has been out of work for some time. She is given a second chance to care for the infamous Leonora Hope, who has been accused but never convicted of murdering her parents and sister.

Leonora Hope is in her 70s now and is paralyzed, confined to a wheelchair. She can't do or say anything, except one day when Kit discovers she's able to use a typewriter. That's where the story begins to escalate as Leonora starts to reveal what really happened in Hope's End all those years ago.

My initial impression when I started reading this book was that it was reminiscent of "Verity" by CoHo. I'm sure anyone who has read both these books can agree; Leonora and Verity are both incapacitated individuals, leaving us to wonder if they are truly who they appear to be.

I relished the eerie atmosphere of the manor and the possibility of it being a ghost story. The twists and turns were SO GOOD. Just when I thought the story had settled, another twist unfolded. Then, when it seemed like the end, another twist happened.

I was deeply invested in the story, particularly the letters that told the tale of the past and revealed what actually happened on the night of the Hope murders. While I found the fate of the Hope estate a bit outlandish at the end, it provided a satisfying conclusion to the story.

Overall, if you're seeking an eerie, spooky, murder-filled, secret-laden mystery story, then this one's for you. I can't wait to read the author's other works now.