Spoiler Discussion for Rock Paper Scissors

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!

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