Book Review #101: Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

 

This is one of the first thrillers that I had on my 2022 TBR. Not only are thrillers my favourite genre, but this one looked especially interesting, so I was really excited to read it.

Adam and Amelia are in the Scottish Highlands for a remote weekend getaway that could make or break their marriage. But Adam and Amelia are both keeping secrets that, if revealed, could destroy their relationship. And soon, it's not only their marriage that's in danger. 

I really wanted to love this book. It had an interesting premise, and could have gone in so many different ways. Unfortunately, it went in a direction that didn't really work for me.

The opening line of the book was the thing that intrigued me enough to get the book in the first place. The character Adam in the book suffers from face-blindness, and does not recognise the people closest to him. I found this really interesting, particularly for a thriller where there is so much that can't be trusted.

From the first page, I found the book really hard to get into. I wasn't into the story or the characters, and picking it up felt a bit like a chore.

For at least half the book, every chapter ended with a sentence like 'he/she/they don't know what's in store', and it felt a bit over the top. Every so often this would be intriguing, but after a while it was like 'okay, we get it, there will be a twist'.

The book feels longer than it is. I was reading for a week and a half when I realised that it was only 310 pages, and I was shocked because I felt like I had been reading for ages and making no progress, and that's partly because the story moves quite slowly, and partly because the beginning of the novel wasn't that interesting. A lot of things are set up, but nothing actually happens for quite a while.

Although I did eventually become invested in the story, I also felt a weird distance from it. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them. And this was true up until the end of the story.

And then the twist came, and I was in two minds about it. It was a good twist, objectively. But while I didn't guess it, there was a lot that gave it away, so it wasn't as much of a surprise as it could have been.

Then there was the ending, which undid any positive feelings I had about the book. The ending was the worst thing about the story.

Overall, I am glad I read this book. There was a time when I put it down and picked up another book, not knowing whether I was going to go back to it or not. But ultimately, I did want to know how it ended, and that is the draw of this book. You want to know how this story will end, and I'm glad that I picked it back up.

2/5