Rock Paper Scissors

Mystery and thriller

Description

Adam and Amelia Wright arrive at a remote converted chapel in the snowy Scottish countryside hoping a weekend away might rescue their marriage. Adam, a workaholic screenwriter with face blindness, cannot recognize even his wife by sight. Their relationship is further shadowed by an anniversary ritual: each year Amelia writes him a letter he is never permitted to read. Now a decade of secrets presses against the couple’s competing versions of their life together, while signs suggest their isolation was deliberately arranged. Alternating perspectives and withheld letters make the marriage itself the central puzzle, as familiar grievances acquire more dangerous meanings and both partners must confront how little they understand the person beside them.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Conversational · Direct

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Atmospheric · Suspenseful · Tense · Unsettling

Structure

Braided · Dual timeline

Focus

Mystery · Plot · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

GuiltIdentityIsolationKnowledge and truthMarriage

About Alice Feeney

Alice Feeney is a British novelist and former BBC producer and journalist whose fiction is rooted in the psychological thriller. Her years in news, including exposure to traumatic cases, inform an interest in how ordinary people conceal or rationalize cruelty. Feeney’s novels are meticulously constructed: she plans characters and timelines on colored cards and usually knows the ending before she drafts. That control is evident in the interlocking time frames of Sometimes I Lie and the competing perspectives of His & Hers, where partial knowledge keeps both characters and readers off balance. Across Rock Paper Scissors, Daisy Darker, and Beautiful Ugly, she repeatedly places strained marriages or families in remote, enclosing settings, using isolation and atmospheric unease to draw out buried grievances and secrets. Her prose tends to be direct and conversational, while her structures depend on shifting testimony, withheld information, and carefully timed revelations. What distinguishes the work is the combination of elaborate narrative engineering with close attention to mistrust inside intimate relationships.

Book details

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Language: English
ISBN: 9781250838926

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