A Marriage Built on Lies: Why the Thriller Rock Paper Scissors Will Have You Suspecting Everyone
Ten years of marriage, an isolated chapel in snow-covered Scotland, and a husband who is physically unable to recognize his own wife's face.
According to the American magazine Publishers Weekly, thriller sales reached 25.5 million copies in 2025. Today's market is saturated with stories about 'perfect' families hiding skeletons in the closet.
It might seem impossible to surprise a seasoned reader by now. But in her novel Rock Paper Scissors, Alice Feeney turns a story about a relationship crisis into a survival game. The Ukrainian translation of the thriller was published by Knyholav in 2023.
The Premise of Rock Paper Scissors
The main characters are an ordinary English couple, the Wrights, married for ten years. Adam is a screenwriter, and Amelia works at a dog shelter. As the spark between them fades, the Wrights, along with their dog, head to Scotland for a getaway meant to save their relationship.
Eight hours into the drive, the couple arrives at Blackwater Chapel, which quickly becomes their airtight prison when a sudden snowstorm hits.
The Lead Character's Prosopagnosia
The story's main twist lies in the husband's unique way of perceiving the world. Adam has prosopagnosia — face blindness. He can't recognize people's faces, relying instead on smell, voice, and clothing. His wife tries to help him so he doesn't feel like an outsider in social settings.
In one of her letters to Adam, Amelia explains that she started bringing him to parties, events, and award ceremonies for one simple reason: to quietly whisper the names of people he's expected to recognize, sparing him the awkwardness.
But when you don't know who's standing in front of you, you can't trust anyone.
The Anatomy of a Lie: Unreliable Narrators
The text keeps readers guessing while showing the same situation through different eyes. The story is told from the perspectives of Adam, Amelia, and a local woman, interwoven with letters Amelia wrote to her husband on every wedding anniversary but never gave him.
It's through these letters that Feeney manipulates the reader most subtly. They reveal the relationship's history, showing its gradual cooling and the buildup of resentment. But the deeper you get into the text, the clearer it becomes: the characters are lying outright — not just to each other, but to the reader too.
A Masterclass in Plot Twists
What truly earns the thriller its highest marks is its attention to detail. The reimagining of victim and perpetrator roles, the real cost of Henry Winter's literary legacy, and the reveal behind the car crash all send readers flipping back through the pages to check how they could have missed it.
Readers are divided on the book: some find the story gripping, while others feel the plot leans too heavily on unreliable narrators.
One Reddit user, posting under the name 'Leemcardhold,' wrote that the author spends so much time building false storylines to obscure the main twist that the characters' stated motivations shift from chapter to chapter without explanation, and that the ending feels unpredictable only because none of the characters or the narration can be trusted.
Meanwhile, the author of the thread says that they liked the ending, just as they'd liked Feeney's previous books.
Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, has been translated into more than 12 languages, and Warner Bros. is adapting it into a series starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.