Rock Paper Scissors
By Alice Feeney
Think you know the person you married? Think again…
Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.
Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.
Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.
Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney.
My thoughts:
This was my third Alice Feeney book, and I think I’ve finally figured out her formula. I’m just not sure I’m a fan of it.
The first book of hers I read, I actually enjoyed. The second one confused the hell out of me. This one fell somewhere in the middle, but with one big problem. I clocked the twist about twenty pages in. I kept reading just to see if I was right. I was. This happens often with me, but a lot of times, I still enjoy the ride. Not so much this time around, mostly because the plot felt forced.
Adam and Amelia Wright have been together a decade, and the marriage is in rough shape. A surprise vacation lands in their lap, a weekend getaway in the Scottish highlands, and they take it. Maybe the trip will save them. Maybe it’ll end them. Adam writes screenplays for a living, and he barely ever takes a break. He also has face blindness. He can’t tell anyone apart by looking at them. (Mmmm hmmm) Strangers, coworkers, his own wife, they all might as well be different people every time he sees them. Every anniversary for the past ten years, Amelia has written him a letter and kept it tucked away. This year, for some reason, she’s finally going to let him read all of them. And the trip itself isn’t quite as innocent as it looks. One of them set it up. One of them is hiding something. The whole weekend is a slow burn toward whatever’s coming.
It’s a fun premise. The face blindness hook was interesting, even though it also plays on one of my most hated thriller tropes. The Scottish setting is moody. The letters add structure and slowly drip out information. On paper, this should have been a great time.
But here’s where I keep getting stuck with Alice Feeney. This is pure speculation on my part, but I think she writes around her twists instead of through them. The plot doesn’t grow into the reveal. It bends to make sure the reveal lands. Everything is positioned with such care that you can feel the author placing the chess pieces. By the time the surprise hits, it doesn’t feel earned. It feels like a trick that was set up two hundred pages ago and waited for its moment. For some readers that’s exactly the appeal. For me, it gets in the way of enjoying the journey.
The characters had the same issue. Adam and Amelia both felt more like vehicles for the structure than real people. I never quite settled into either of them. Adam is the more sympathetic of the two, partly because his face blindness is a fascinating thing to read from the inside, and partly because he’s clearly being kept in the dark in his own marriage. Amelia is harder to pin down. There’s distance between her and the reader the entire time, and I think that’s intentional, but it also kept me from caring about her the way the book wants me to. A lot of this had to do with the fact that I knew exactly why she was positioned this way.
The pacing is solid, I’ll give it that. The chapters move quickly. The letters break things up nicely. The Scottish weather does a lot of work creating atmosphere. If you don’t see the twist coming, I imagine the back half is a lot of fun. If you do see it coming, you spend the second half watching the book catch up to where you already are.
I’ll be honest. I’m on the fence with this author. I keep wanting to like her books more than I do. The premises are great, the hooks are sharp, the writing is clear. But that orchestrated quality keeps tripping me up. I want twists that grow out of character and choice, not twists that feel installed.
If you read thrillers specifically for the wild reveal at the end, and you don’t mind a little authorial sleight of hand to get there, you’ll probably have a great time with this one. If you want twists that feel earned and organic, this might leave you a little cold. I didn’t hate my time with it, but I didn’t love it either. I think I’m officially closing the door on Alice Feeney for a while.
