The Only One Left has been floating around social media for a while now, popping up on “anticipated reads of the month” posts and all sorts for what seems like months. It’s been on my library requests for almost as long too and with every new post I saw including it I was slowly getting the bar raised for my expectations. Could this be the next greatest thriller read?

Sadly, like with many social media hyped books that end up on my tbr list, it was a dit of a let down. Riley Sager isn’t a bad thriller writer, nor is he a bad writer in general, it’s just that more my tastes The Only One Left was bland. It has the promised isolated house, creepy backstory, layered characters with their own agendas and goals, and the setting was constructed really well. It just didn’t get off the ground.

The point of a thriller is to be thrilled, to be thrown off your assumption and given an ending you weren’t expecting, character reveals you didn’t see coming, conflicts and realisations that culminate in an action-packed climax where the timer is ticking down and it’s life or death. Unfortunately, I wasn’t feeling very thrilled. The plot proceeds at a decent pace, details coming to light at adequate times and uncertainties clouding our protagonists judgement. It’s a good read, just not great. The reveals, and some of them were very good, happen almost all at the same time and half of them get tied up too neatly in my opinion. It almost felt like the answer was given and then wiped off the board too soon.

This may just be me analysing this book too critically. I can see how an ordinary reader could pick this up and love it (by ordinary I mean someone who didn’t study writing in university and someone who isn’t a diehard thriller fanatic). It’s a good story with the right elements and right trajectory. There are just too many things that withhold it from being great in my eyes and considering the hype it has on social media I’m surprised there aren’t more readers who publicly feel the same.