is where I could see the author's plan around marriage more clearly than the character's need.
I became most involved through the people caught in marriage, especially around the snowbound setting. Adam's face blindness and Amelia's resentment create uncertainty, while the hidden writer of anniversary letters controls the deeper game. This is where my sympathy became complicated rather than automatic, because recognition carries a real cost.
The sections I enjoyed most involved the snowbound setting, anniversary letters, unreliable viewpoints, and carefully timed identity reveals. Those sections find a rhythm that suits the book's interest in recognition.
The larger subject is marriage, recognition, resentment, secrecy, revenge, memory, and private versions of a relationship. I appreciated that marriage is tied to money, family, work, and the snowbound setting rather than left as an abstract idea.
One brief exchange about recognition, tied to the snowbound setting, did more for me than the longer explanations around it.
I ended up at 4.2/5. The book's final hold came from the snowbound setting, a specific choice rather than a general message.
Book Summary
A troubled married couple spends a winter anniversary in an isolated Scottish chapel where alternating accounts reveal how little they know each other. Adam's face blindness and Amelia's resentment create uncertainty, while the hidden writer of anniversary letters controls the deeper game. What follows is a story concerned with marriage, recognition, resentment, secrecy, revenge, memory, and private versions of a relationship, told through pressure on trust, identity, and ordinary decisions.
What I Liked
The best material for me was the snowbound setting, anniversary letters, unreliable viewpoints, and carefully timed identity reveals. I also responded to the way Adam's face blindness and Amelia's resentment create uncertainty, while the hidden writer of anniversary letters controls the deeper game. Together, those choices made the people in Rock Paper Scissors feel more important than the premise.
What Could Be Better
I was less convinced because several reveals depend on withheld information rather than fair clues, and characters can feel designed for the puzzle. I could understand the intention in Rock Paper Scissors, yet the execution felt easier than the surrounding material.
Context Behind the Book
Alice Feeney is a British thriller writer known for unreliable narrators, domestic secrets, memory problems, and structural twists.
