TEST
We’ve all played the game but few of us have used as high stakes as are utilized in Alice Feeney’s new domestic thriller Rock Paper Scissors. Told in alternating points of view, this locked room mystery will keep you guessing to the very end.
Amelia and Adam Wright are all wrong for each other. They can barely stand to hold hands and their counselor has recommended a holiday to rekindle the spark. “Can a weekend away really save a marriage?” they asked her. She seems to think so and as a result, Amelia and her screenwriter husband Adam head to the secluded, luxurious Blackwater Chapel in the Scottish Highlands for their romantic rendezvous.
Their arrival sets the ominous tone for the story. Adam and Amelia reach their retreat during a dreadful storm. The doors are locked and there is no key, but when they return from their search for a possible rear entrance, a journey which had seen them pummeled by the wind and ice, the doors are mysteriously wide open. The interior is rustic, and has a dusty, unused feel to it. Even though both speak of relaxing and making the best of it, they snipe at each other during every conversation. They dread spending several days alone together in these conditions – then a face appears in the window, causing Amelia to spill the wine she had just reached for and making them realize that perhaps alone together is safer than the alternative.
From the start it is made clear that both Amelia and Adam have underlying motives for agreeing to the vacation and that it is very possible one – or both of them – won’t make it back to London at the end of the book.
Like most thrillers today, Rock Paper Scissors is a chilling, atmospheric novel which features intriguing, flawed characters. Feeney does a fantastic job of capturing that sense in marriage of never really knowing the other person, and the ability even a spouse of many years has to surprise us. In the case of Adam and Amelia, there are many secrets beneath the surface of their union since a lot of lies paved their way to the altar, and this getaway will be the time everything comes out in the open.
Naturally, I can’t tell you much about that. It’s hard to write a review without details but in this case, it is also absolutely necessary. The plot is like a staircase, and you won’t know what’s waiting for you at the end until you arrive at it. Here are some of my general impressions, though, and hopefully they will be enough to encourage you to rush out and pick up this novel.
Our narrative, as per the current vogue, includes unreliable narrators who are keeping big, dark secrets. Adam, who has face blindness, feels he has compensated fairly well for this issue by being an astute judge of character. He has flourished in his career, in part due to being a workaholic, but he is far less aware of the world around him than he thinks he is and has no idea that the secret to his success is actually due more to his wife than the time and effort he devotes to his occupation.
Amelia has been told she loves animals more than people and she doesn’t doubt it. She finds people selfish and difficult to understand and Adam is no exception. She wants their marriage to work, but in Amelia’s mind, Adam’s sacrificed their love to his ambition – and she has no intention of continuing on in that vein.
Robin is our third narrator and just what role she plays in the story and how she is connected to Adam and Amelia isn’t apparent until the last few pages of the book. There were many times throughout the story that she felt superfluous or needlessly ambiguous, but I was quite satisfied with how the ending wrapped things up regarding her.
I’ve spoken often of the conclusion, and that’s because a full understanding of what is going on hinges on the denouement. The great news is, the book is riveting enough that you will be compelled to keep reading to the very last page, even though those final revelations will leave you wondering if justice is truly served at the end.
Something that I really appreciated is that none of the ambiguity is due to substance abuse or mental illness. The impetus for the plot comes strictly from things the characters are hiding and their desire to have them remain hidden. I liked also that no surprise villains showed up at the end -this is a mind game and the characters we are introduced to from the start have all the answers we need.
The entire time I was reading, and while I was writing this review, I kept thinking of Billy Joel’s song The Stranger. Specifically, the following lyrics.
Well, we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover see
The stranger in yourself?
Rock Paper Scissors is those lyrics fictionalized and personified in book form. If they intrigue you at all, this book will be perfect for you.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent retailer
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Grade: A-
Book Type: Psychological Thriller
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 09/09/21
Publication Date: 09/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I've been an avid reader since 2nd grade and discovered romance when my cousin lent me Lord of La Pampa by Kay Thorpe in 7th grade. I currently read approximately 150 books a year, comprised of a mix of Young Adult, romance, mystery, women's fiction, and science fiction/fantasy.
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I had to pop back in and say I just finished this book and it’s fantastic. There is a twist—and it’s a doozy—but it develops organically from the personalities of the three main characters and what we gradually come to know about their lives and backgrounds. I will also suggest reading (as opposed to listening to) the book because close reading is really important (I don’t think I would have picked up on so many of the clues had I been listening to an audiobook). As most readers do after a big reveal, I went back and reread certain parts of the book and am happy to report that Feeney played fair throughout the story. Highly recommended.
I’m so glad you liked the book! I don’t listen to many thrillers and would agree this one is definitely better in book form. I thought the twist was great, too. You don’t feel cheated – there was a subtle hint beneath the surface all along – but you do feel blown away.
This review looks so intriguing! But I feel obligated to ask: Did you enjoy Gone Girl, a book I loathed? Or to put it another way, would you say, “If you loved Gone Girl, you’ll love Rock, Paper, Scissors“?
I had mixed feelings re Gone Girl. I loved that it broke the good person/bad person dynamic that had always been a staple of mysteries until then. Nick and Amy were both unreliable narrators and both guilty of some pretty nasty behavior and that, to me, really ramped up the suspense of the tale. I liked that it was a cat/mouse psychological game, with both of them having to use what they knew about the other person to manipulate the odds in their favor. But I appreciate the impact the book had on the genre more than I liked the book itself and I liked Rock Paper Scissors a lot more than I liked Gone Girl. My rec would be to use the library or to check if any of Feeney’s backlist is on sale and see if you like her style. I liked the author’s His and Hers a lot and while I Know Who You Are had a super weird twist at the end, I mostly enjoyed that one as well.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Maggie.
I just went out to GR and found 1 review that spoiled a bit of the ending. Of more importance though, many of the reviews indicated that, similar to Gone Girl, Rock Paper Scissors features really unlikable characters.
So I’ll probably pass on this book, because GG taught me that I need at least one protagonist I can root for! (Alternate scenario: I see this book at the library and rifle through the final chapter. :-) )
Catherine Ryan Howard’s The Liars Girl was an Edgar Award Nominee which has a protagonist you can root for. It was a five star read for me, so that might be something that would work better than Rock Paper Scissors for you.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look for that book!
Not knowing someone you are close to is actually a fairly common trope, but that doesn’t stop it from being potentially powerful and even poignant. The titular character in Anita Shreve’s The Pilot’s Wife realizes that she didn’t know her husband at all after he dies and his secrets become public. There is also the classic horror story when a poor couple is tempted by an offer to inherit money when an unknown person dies. The husband is horrified and declines the offer, but the wife goes behind his back and accepts. The husband then dies in an accident and she gets his life insurance. When she confronts the devil and says it was supposed to be someone she didn’t know, he asks “and what made you think you truly knew your husband?” I’ve just begun reading Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me, and already the wife has been warned “Owen is not who you think he is”. I think this kind of story can be even more frightening than the paranormals or ghost stories or whatever, because we all have people we love and build our world around, but what would we do if it turns out we’ve built on a house of cards?
I agree that this can be more frightening than horror/ghost stories since those narratives tend to present themselves as tall tales/camp fire tales while books using the lover as stranger trope force us to consider our own reality and make us question just how well we know the people we love. Feeney does a great job with that in this book.
As soon as you said the denouement doesn’t rely on mental illness or surprise villains, I was sold. Onto the tbr it goes. I like your inclusion of the Billy Joel lyrics too. Sometimes, I think the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Brilliant Disguise” would make a great backdrop to a psychological suspense, especially the last few lines:
“When you look at me, baby/
You better look hard and look twice/
‘Cause is it me, baby/
Or just a brilliant disguise?”
Oh, I love those lyrics! They would have worked for a book I read recently – 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard. I don’t mind “crazy” like Nick and Amy from Gone Girl but I do mind when it turns out the main character has been mentally ill all along and fed us false information. It *can* work in some instances (I remember a couple of movies where it did) but most of the time it doesn’t. The same with the surprise villain. If I’m reading a closed room mystery and suddenly we find out there was another character moving through the house unseen, it can spoil the whole thing.