“Rock Paper Scissors” by Alice Feeney

Alice Feeney’s “Rock Paper Scissors” is a psychological thriller set in an eerie chapel that is cut off from the city. A couple in a desperate attempt to save their marriage and patch things up plan a weekend getaway to a secluded place which the wife won in a Christmas raffle. On their arrival, they experience mysterious happenings in and around the chapel that are paranormal in nature. Is there a rational explanation to what they experience? Were they lured in to visit this chapel? What is it that is planned for them?

Adam, a screenwriter who suffers from face blindness and his wife Amelia arrive at the chapel to give a try at renewing their relationship. With secrets at stake which they have hidden from each other and their past catching up with them, they realise that their stay at the chapel is life threatening.

Alice Feeney

The first half of the novel is slow paced with the happenings restricted to a closed atmosphere. The letters written by the wife secretly on each anniversary and hidden from her husband serve  as a nonlinear narrative to the story. Though this narrative occasionally gives the high points, the novel tests your patience for an impending twist which takes long to show up. But, the author drops a banger of a twist after the first half and from then on, there is no looking back. 

The novel is filled with quotes that are superficial and often distracting. There are few knots that are put up early on and left unattended when the story unravels at the end. 

A novel surviving on a sole twist which is genuinely surprising, but one has to sit through a snail paced narration in the first half to experience it.