Looking for a plot summary or spoilers for Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney? Want to discuss the ending? Want the Rock Paper Scissors ending explained? Me too. Check out my Spoiler Discussion for Rock Paper Scissors and let’s figure it out!
Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney
Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney was published on September 7, 2021 by Flatiron Books. Thanks to them for the advance copy!
Brief Synopsis: 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 Mr. and Mrs. Wright 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.
Table of Contents:
Plot Summary for Rock Paper Scissors
The Ending of Rock Paper Scissors Explained
Spoiler Discussion for Rock Paper Scissors
NEW: Rock Paper Scissors Movie News!!
Plot Summary of Rock Paper Scissors
Married couple Adam and Amelia, plus their dog, Bob, are headed to Scotland for a weekend trip that Amelia won as a prize in a work raffle.
Adam is a screenwriter with face blindness (could this be a plot device? hmmm) whose screenplay, Rock Paper Scissors, is about a man who writes annual letters to his wife on their anniversary.
Adam was never able to get his screenplay made and now adapts other writers’ novels. Amelia works at an animal rescue charity.
They arrive at their lodging, which is an old converted chapel that seems remote and deserted. Adam notes that he saw Amelia take his phone out of the car and leave it back at home.
Rock Paper Scissors alternates between narrative and anniversary letters written by Adam’s wife, which I will summarize in their actual place in the book.
First anniversary letter (paper): HUGE CLUE: the wife in the letters signs them “your wife” which is a BIG hint that the person writing these letters is NOT Amelia. In this letter, the wife reveals that Adam got a job adapting his favorite novelist’s work because of her, and she’s keeping this a secret.
In the present, Amelia reflects on her unhappiness with their marriage. She sees a face in the window. There’s also no cell service.
Second anniversary letter (cotton): Adam buys a house for his wife as a surprise.
Third anniversary letter(leather): Adam and his wife are at a party with novelist Henry Winter.
False alarm: the face Amelia sees in the window is…. a sheep. Amelia still feels like she’s being watched.
New narrator: a woman named Robin, who lives in a cottage near the chapel. She watches the couple arrive and settle in.
Amelia goes down into the cellar to get wine, but the lights go out and she is trapped. Adam finds Amelia and brings her asthma inhaler. They find their bedroom, which has been painted the same color as their bedroom at home, with the same bedding. Mysterious!
While Adam goes to explore the chapel further, he reflects that both he and Amelia cheated. Adam dreams about driving in a storm and hitting a woman in a red kimono.
Fourth anniversary letter: Adam’s wife describes their struggles with infertility.
Amelia wakes up and hears a noise. She finds Adam, who says he couldn’t sleep. He’s the one who turned the power out.
Fifth anniversary letter (wood): Adam is hanging out with October, an actress who wants to star in a theater version of Adam’s screenplay. October comes over and makes Adam and his wife an anniversary dinner.
Robin is hiding in the chapel. She knows Adam.
The next morning Amelia and Adam can’t find Bob, their dog. Inside the cottage, they find a drawer full of clippings about October, the actress. Also a history of the chapel, which is haunted. As they are searching for Bob, they find Robin’s cottage and write her a note asking for help. Bob is with Robin.
Sixth anniversary letter (iron): October has opened doors for Adam, who is adapting another Henry Winter book for the screen. Adam and his wife spend their anniversary at October’s French villa.
As they search for Bob, Adam thinks the woman in the cottage seems familiar. As they head back to the chapel, Adam runs ahead and Amelia can’t find him. He tells her that he knows who the chapel belongs to.
Seventh anniversary letter (copper): October has been found dead by suicide. Adam and his wife take a trip to New York.
Adam tells Amelia that the chapel belongs to Henry Winter, the writer. He thinks their “winning” the visit to the chapel was a ruse and that Henry is angry with him.
They hear a familiar bark and rush outside, where they find Bob’s collar on top of a gravestone belonging to …Henry Winter, who died two years before.
Adam says Henry was upset with him as he’d stopped adapting Henry’s novels to focus on his own work. They prepare to dig their car out of the snow and discover they have two flat tires.
Bob in is Robin’s cottage. Robin remembers being summoned by Henry when he was dying.
Eighth anniversary (bronze): Adam’s wife recalls arriving home and finding Henry Winter there with Adam. After she returns, they play rock-paper-scissors to determine the future of their marriage.
Adam finds the anniversary gifts his wife made for him inside the chapel.
Ninth anniversary (pottery): Adam’s wife’s friend from work at the dog shelter arrives at the house. The co-worker has changed her hair to look exactly like the wife’s hair. SINGLE WHITE FEMALE!
Adam shows Amelia the gifts he found and accuses her of being behind the trip. And if Henry died two years ago, who wrote his new book?
Tenth anniversary (tin): Adam and his wife are watching a TV interview with Henry, who disparages Adam. The wife recalls coming home and finding Adam in bed with her friend from work. He claims he thought he was sleeping with his wife.
Amelia shows Adam a picture of his first wedding, to Robin, Henry’s daughter. Robin grew up in the chapel. Robin is the one who got Adam the job adapting her father’s books. Amelia is the co-worker of Robin, the one who seduced Adam. Bob was Robin’s dog.
Robin recalls finding Amelia in bed with Adam and running off. Robin believes Henry had something to do with her mother’s death. She wrote a story about a man who drowned his wife in the bathtub and Henry punished her. Robin also finished one of Henry’s unfinished novels after his death and sent it to his agent.
Eleventh anniversary (steel): Robin writes to Adam about her new life in the chapel. She’s also writing a book with him in it.
Amelia doesn’t feel guilty about cheating with Robin’s husband. She wonders if Robin is behind bringing them to the chapel. But she thinks she’s smarter and stronger than Robin. She and Adam find a red kimono on the bed and a note on the mirror that says Rock Paper Scissors.
Twelfth anniversary (silk): This is the first anniversary letter that Robin intends to let Adam read. She didn’t tell him that Henry Winter was her father because he was a dark and dangerous man, an abusive bully.
Henry’s latest novel, Rock Paper Scissors will be about a married couple who takes a weekend away. It’s a combination of his screenplay and her letters. She will let him write the screenplay … if he ditches Amelia.
She tells him that Henry hired a PI who told him that Adam was cheating. That Amelia is a former teenage criminal who was driving the car that killed Adam’s mother. She tells him he has three choices: ROCK (he tries to escape with Amelia), PAPER (he goes back to Robin) and SCISSORS (he doesn’t want to know what that option is.)
Robin locks Adam and Amelia inside the chapel and slides a note under the door. Adam reads the letter and confronts Amelia about his mother’s death. He tells her he was never really happy with her. Amelia comes at him with a knife, and Robin comes at her with scissors.
Explanation of the Ending of Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney
Robin, Adam and Bob have returned to London. Robin’s book will be published. Adam is happy, though he feels guilty about the fact that HE was driving the car that killed his mother. Amelia was in the car with him and she got blamed, as he got out of the car after the accident and she drove away.
Sam (the PI) had been following Robin for ten years (??? Yeah, I have a lot of questions for him…)
When Sam sees that Robin and Adam are back together, he decides to drive to Scotland and tell Henry. (If he was following Robin for ten years, did he not know that Henry was dead?)
He arrives at the chapel and discovers Henry’s grave with a glass box on top of it. Henry’s tombstone has been changed from “Father of One” to “Killer of One.” Inside the box is a paper frame, a pair of scissors and a ring that’s on a severed human finger. He flees.
Spoiler Discussion for Rock Paper Scissors
What did you think of Rock Paper Scissors?
Since there were so few characters, I figured out the “your wife” scenario pretty quickly. Signing the letters “your wife” was weird and a big red flag. If the wife who wrote the anniversary letters wasn’t Amelia, it had to be Robin.
Sometimes my hunches are wrong but this one was right!
I am still puzzled about the part Adam’s face blindness played into the plot. Did he really not realize he was cheating on Robin? He tries to tell Robin that he thought it was her, but she knows him well enough to know that he’s lying. I was expecting some kind of test where Adam has to pick out which wife is which.
I guess Adam also didn’t recognize grown-up Amelia when she showed up (but people do change over that span of time.) Did he realize that he and Amelia had hit his mother and their dog with the car (maybe he recognized that red kimono?)
Was Henry responsible for his wife’s death? I found that more interesting than a lot of other things. Was that ever resolved or did I miss it? Clearly, Robin thought he did it.
Why did Robin cut off Amelia’s finger and just leave it (and the ring) there? What?? Some kind of offering to her father? I guess. I don’t know?!?
What the deal with Sam the PI? Who was paying him for the last ten years? If it was Henry, he’s dead.
Questions we are discussing in comments – join us and add your own!
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Amelia’s ring: too tight? Too loose? Why did Robin leave it on the grave? Allison has a great theory in the comments!
Adam: had he been to the Scottish chapel before with Robin? If so, why didn’t he say anything? Does his face blindness come and go? Is it real?
Henry: did he kill his wife? Was Robin lying about him?
Robin: Did she kill October? Did she kill Henry? Did her father really kill her mother? What were her rock-paper-scissors threats to Adam at the end?
Sam: who was paying him over the last ten years? Robin? Henry?
Are all the characters unreliable? Rose thinks so, and describes how Robin uses the chapel to set up a weird little game for Adam and Amelia, something that Adam realizes.
Rock Paper Scissor Movie News
I was on Instagram the other day and saw something very exciting:
Alice Feeney AT THE NETFLIX OFFICES!
This is as intriguing as the severed finger left on the grave.
This is what I found out:
In this interview, Alice Feeney says YES there will be a Netflix series of Rock Paper Scissors. I attended her author event in January 2026 and she said the movie is ON!
This article says the series will be filmed in the Scottish highlands. Nothing against Canada, but I love an authentic setting.
Please leave your opinions in comments – we are a friendly group and there is no such thing as a dumb question!
If you’re an Alice Feeney fan, come check out my spoiler discussion for His & Hers!
My Spoiler Discussion Post for Sometimes I Lie
A Spoiler Discussion Post for Daisy Darker
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Hi – I just finished the audiobook and I totally missed the “wife” trick. Very clever and another spin on the unreliable narrator which is always fun. I have scrolled through the comments but didn’t see anyone mentioning what they did with Amelia’s body? Any ideas? I do think Robin was the psychopath who probably killed everyone except Adam’s mother but do we know for sure that Amelia was the girl in the car with Adam when they hit his mother and they were 13 or could it have been Robin since she wasn’t living with Henry. I’m re-listening to the last few chapters to see if I missed something else.
Hi Nancy.
Ooh, good question about Amelia. Let us know if you find anything. Yes, I think Amelia was definitely the one in the car! I am a fast reader so don’t notice as much as some of my commenters, but I did think that signing the letters that way was strange.
Just re-listened to the anniversary gift chapters again. Much more fun knowing Robin is the author. I think it’s clear that Alexandra/Robin murdered October and made it look like suicide because she was jealous of her relationship with Adam and I agree that Amelia was in the car with Adam as a teen but since he was actually driving Amelia didn’t really deserve any of the blame. Sam’s chapter at the end tells us that they buried Amelia in an unmarked grave (except for her inhaler) so they’re both guilty of murder and psychopaths who think they’ve gotten away with murder and just moved on. It seems unlikely that Sam would just hightail it out of there without reporting to the local police everything he saw in the cemetery so hopefully the Wright couple gets what they deserve in the end.
Thanks so much for the update, Nancy! I agree that poor Amelia got a bad deal, though she did cheat with her friend’s husband so there’s that. If you have time, I am curious about your take on Adam. I returned my book to the library, but you think that Robin killed Amelia and then Adam helped her bury the body? Sam better watch his back lolol!
Remember, Robin carved what was on the original tombstone, so I’m guessing she did it herself. I thought the ring was Adam’s mother’s ring that Robin left at their house after she learned of the affair and Amanda creepily started wearing. Not sure why Robin cut off Amelia’s finger or why Adam and Robin would end up living happily ever after. I thought the ending was very strange.
The ending was SO strange. The fact that there is so much unresolved just bothers me!!
This book is titled “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Henry “wrote” a book called RPS. In the glass box that’s on top of Henry’s tombstone are: Rock = Sapphire, Paper = Crane, Scissor = antique scissor
Thanks, Mary 🙂 – I didn’t think of the ring as a “rock” but that makes perfect sense!
IMO he just left it because, Rock (ring)Paper (crane) Sissors, and to blame Henry on the murder of his late wife…
Hi, Sacha! In the book, the word father is actually marked out at the end and killer is written beside it.
I have to agree with your assessment of Robin. Definitely something sinister about her. Not sure she killed her Mother, though.
First of all, who is the author of this book? If it was Alice Feeny, then why is everyone on this site trying to write the explanations for her? It obviously didn’t make much sense to most of us as there are too many plot holes and unanswered questions. When I finish a book, I expect to understand what the whole thing was about and what the ending means.
I have decided this is a book that held my interest but only deserves 2-3 stars. The puzzling ending must have been written when the author had been under a deadline or imbibed too much wine. No one seems to know why the finger was left outside on the grave. There should have been an explanation. No one knows if the husband had been to the cathedral before or what his mysterious plans were. No one knows who killed whom.
I don’t know how or why the detective could be following everyone around for ten years and never been seen, wasnt being paid for a few years and didn’t know his employer was dead. Some detective! And why did he run away like he suddenly believed in ghosts when he heard the voice? I thought he didn’t believe in ghosts.
Didn’t he want to know how Henry died and why the finger was there? It would have looked suspicious even to a novice like myself. Running away like a scared mouse didn’t fit the detective’s character at all.
After all these concerns, where were the editors of this silly book? Probably enjoying too much of the good wine in the cathedral with Alice.
Just finished this book and tried to see what I missed regarding the ending. Your comments make the most sense. It did seem like perhaps the author was on a deadline. I enjoyed the book until I was left with to many unanswered questions. I’m with you, we should know what happened. I mean, leaving the ring to represent rock makes some sense. But, why the need to cut off the finger? And why the whispering of Sams name at the gravesite. This book leaves me with questions. And I can not recommend
I just finished reading this book and immediately had to google “ending explained” because, as much as I liked it, there were things that didn’t add up to me. After reading through the spoiler and subsequent comments, here’s what I’m left with:
1. The “Rock Paper Scissors” tokens left on Henry’s gravestone makes a lot more sense to me now.
2. Henry was paying Sam (the PI) for the first 10 years, then Robin was paying him for the 2 years that Adam was married to Amelia. The payments only stopped when Robin returned back with Adam.
3. I don’t think Adam had ever been in the house before – he only recognized the writing room because of a magazine photo he’d seen of Henry. The whole thing about missing the creaky step was due to the fact that he’d crept downstairs earlier and then memorized which steps made noise. If you remember, the first time he didn’t skip them.
4. I didn’t pick up on the fact that ‘your wife’ wasn’t Amelia, but now looking back it was a major clue! I actually thought that Robin was October at first, and after that I thought maybe it was Adam’s mother and that she wasn’t ever really dead (I thought maybe the face blindness would come into play if he saw another woman being killed but assumed it was his mother)
5. I don’t understand why Robin would’ve changed the gravestone to say ‘killer of one’ – presumably she meant that Henry killed her mother, but she ordered the gravestone in the first place, so why wait until then to make that inscription?
6. I think the ending is meant to leave you unsure of who the “villain” was. Was it Robin or Henry? I saw a lot of people commenting that they thought it was Henry until Sam’s chapter where he claims Henry was a good person. But, all throughout Adam’s chapters, he insists that Robin is “beautiful on the inside.” So, I think that in the end, it’s alluding to the fact that both Henry and Robin are gifted storytellers – both in real life and on paper. They can both make themselves appear to be someone different.
7. It bothered me that Adam blamed Amelia so much for the death of his mother when it turns out that HE was actually the one driving. I do understand that she drove away from the scene, but when she was arrested, she easily could’ve told the police that Adam was the one driving. I’m not entirely sure why she didn’t. OR why she wanted to come and track him down all those years later.
Katie! I am so glad you stopped by to chat. Hope you’ll come back – you can find a list of all my discussion posts here.
Glad we all pretty much agree on #1 and #2
#3 makes SO much sense – a lot of us had been struggling to make sense of that
#4 lol figuring out that Robin wrote the letters was pretty much my best and only insight
#5 very good point
#6 completely agree – I think at first we are made to feel sorry for Robin. Her husband cheated on her with her friend, etc. But then we see that she’s actually a very angry person. It’s hard to tell about Henry, because we see him mostly through Robin’s memories.
#7 also agree that it was weird that Amelia ended up married to him after all that. You’d think that she wouldn’t have forgiven him and vice versa.
Very true that she’s so angry, but it’s odd because from the “Robin” chapters, it appears like she’s lived that angry, hermit-like existence for a really long time. But then we find out it’s only been two years!
And, I still don’t quite know why Adam and Amelia’s marriage was on the rocks. They weren’t actually married very long and it’s never explained what happened.
Hi again Katie,
I got an email from a blog reader and since you did such a close read, am wondering your thoughts:
“I have a lingering issue that won’t leave my thoughts – there is one Anniversary letter in which Adam meets Robin in NYC, but Robin had done her hair differently and is wearing a new dress… but Robin comments on the fact that Adam goes right to her and has a surprising amount of confidence that she is his wife when he sits down and starts talking to her, which is irregular. This is not really brought up again. Do you think that this could be a subtle hint that Adam’s face blindness is made up as a convenient excuse for several issues throughout his life? He refers to it several times throughout the book from his perspective, but when he first meets Amelia (as Robin’s “friend”) he comments on how good of an actor she is. Could that be a hint that he acts regularly, too? The only gap would be the party that he couldn’t tell Henry attended… I just can’t think of another explanation for him having no qualms about greeting her in NYC. Any thoughts on this? I would be so grateful to at least know someone else hates this loose end, as well!”
My take is possibly. The book does make a lot of the face blindness (and I think the main purpose of it is so that he doesn’t realize that Amelia was the one who accidentally killed his mother.) Maybe it’s comes and goes or maybe it’s psychosomatic. Anyway, curious what you (or anyone else) thought
Oh, that’s a good point. I didn’t catch that but now it does make me wonder. But then wouldn’t he have recognized his mother when she died? Or maybe it was just a psychological thing to deal with the fact that he didn’t slow down in time.
Hi, everyone! I absolutely agree on the possible unreliability of Adam’s face blindness. In the Copper chapter he “recognises” Robin despite the fact she is wearing a new dress. Robin also adds that Adam seems to be paying attention to a young waitress and so she starts wondering how he was able to recognise the beautiful features of her young face. Is Adam’s prosopagnosia intermittent or is it just Robin being paranoid?
I totally missed the rock, paper, scissors connection at the end. Thanks for sharing!
I was left dumbfounded by the major twist in the story and think Alice Feeney is the best psychological thriller novelist. I LOVE HER BOOKS!
I agree with your interpretation completely. The only thing I will add is that I think the purpose of the last chapter was to show that Robin was an unreliable narrator…
HOWEVER, the investigator said that Henry told him Robin disappeared at 18 and he didn’t know where she was Until she called and asked if Adam could adapt one of Henry’s novels. We know that happened on their one year anniversary. But we also know that Henry photo bombed their wedding photo, so we know that is a lie, therefore Henry is a liar and hiring a man to stalk your child for ten years is something a creepy abuser would do. So I don’t believe that Robin is unreliable and she’s the only sympathetic character in the novel. Also, the investigator said that Henry came to think of Adam as a son, but his comments on television is what kick started the insecurity in Adam to have the affair. Although I guess that’s more subjective.
Ooh, interesting theories.