#RockPaperScissors – Rosepoint Publishing

December Rosepoint Reviews Recap—Hello January 2022!

We had a lovely quiet Christmas day the CE and I, enjoying a small lobster tail and baked potato for dinner. (I’m well and truly tired of turkey and ham! Thinking we’ll do a repeat for New Year’s eve.) We stopped going out years ago (for NYE) and with the Covid continuing to mutate, snow and ice, no problem enjoying our cozy home and TV. That large screen provides front row seats to watch the ball drop in New York and the fireworks over Lake Michigan from Chicago. Works for us!

December always brings extra shopping and home time with decorating and packing, trips to the post office, and food planning and prep. Still, we managed fifteen book reviews for December, most from NetGalley, three audiobooks from my lovely local library. That CE is a reading machine!

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney (audiobook)
Fletcher and the Blue Star by John Drake (a CE review)
Last to Know by Brandy Heineman (a CE review)
Elinor by Shanno McNear (a CE review)
Targeted by Stephen Hunter (a CE review)
The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain
Rohm Around the Dial by Micheal Maxwell (a CE review)
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty (audiobook)
Twenty Years Later by Charlie Donlea (a CE review)
The Great Witch of Brittany by Louisa Morgan
The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly (a CE review)
Jane Darrowfield and the Mad Woman Next Door by Barbara Ross
City of the Dead by Jonathan Kellerman (a CE review)
A Deception Most Deadly by Genevieve Essig
Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain (audiobook)

Good News! My reading challenges have all been updated! I made and exceeded all of my goals. You can check out the challenges page by clicking the Reading Challenges page. Thinking I’ll bump everything up except the Goodreads Challenge next year.

I’m currently at 408 NetGalley reviews and updated my widget graphic to 400. I’m holding pretty steady at 96-97% feedback ratio and try not to get too crazy with looking for new books, but with so many new books being uploaded for the new year, it’s tough. I’ll update the sidebar graphic again at 420. How are you doing with your challenges?

Then, more good news! Perhaps you remember that in February 2020 I’d found and tried attending two local book clubs meeting in the afternoon, the Third Monday Book Club and Fiction Addiction, the latter of which made more sense. In my area. Closer. But just starting and stopped immediately due to the first Covid shutdown.

Well, the library is trying again having reinvented the book club and now calling it As the Page Turns Book Club AND it will be online. Strictly a digital bookclub and they picked The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller for the first selection. (Yes, it’s an Amazon #1 best seller in classic American literature, published August 2012.)

Also, the moderator issued instructions for receiving the ebook through Freading. Whaaa?? (Are you familiar with this digital book download library?) Try as I might, that was simply going to be a no-go and I gave up in frustration. So I jumped into my handy-dandy and ever available Overdrive (also Libby). Sure enough, the book was listed in both ebook and audiobook formats (on a wait list). Guess which one I chose?! Hmmm, well, this will be interesting. Wish me luck!

Have you read any of the books listed above? Encouraged to look into one you missed? I hope so!

Thank you for joining my community if you are new and thank you again to my established followers.

Rock Paper Scissors: A Novel by Alice Feeney – #Audiobook Review – #domesticthrillers

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Book Blurb:

Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times best-selling author Alice Feeney.

Think you know the person you married? Think again….

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 the couple exchanges 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.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.

My Review:

Admittedly, this was an audiobook and I choose audiobooks to fill the hours in which I’m cleaning, gardening, shopping, or cooking. So, is it possible I missed something along the way?

Alice Feeney, the “queen of the killer twist.” I must admit to having gotten confused near the end with all the ole switcheroos. There is a dual POV all through the narrative and certainly no problem to follow who was who for some time. The anniversary letters that Amelia were never going to give her husband Adam became more depressing with each year of the marriage. These people were NOT happy. He has face blindness, prosopagnosia. Gees, okay, but did he still have it into the conclusion?

Having following the anniversary traditional gifts throughout their nine years, they are trying a weekend in Scotland for their tenth, and perhaps last, anniversary. They are each aware the other is hiding secrets. It doesn’t take a long time for me to mistrust either of them and the mistrust to grow into dislike.

There is something really weird about this win at Blackwater Chapel in the Scottish Highlands and doesn’t take long to become sinister, creepy, which only adds to the deception each is dishing to the other. There is a “caretakers” cottage a short distance from the chapel, occupied by an old crone with her own motives and objectives.

The dead of winter atmosphere, cold, snow, ice, freezing temps. Inoperable car, remote location. Ooh, the atmosphere—definitely adds to the suspense vibe—builds the tension. But at the end, who was who? I was lost.

Confusion, convoluted albeit well-plotted novel reigns. I’ve read two of her other thrillers, Sometimes I Lie, and His & Hers, giving the latter five stars. Not so sold on this one, but still an interesting and engaging read, and I’ll be looking for another Feeney book.

Book Details:

Genre: Domestic Thrillers, Family Life Fiction, Psychological Thrillers
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
ASIN: B08ST3T35N
Listening Length: 10 hrs 22 mins
Narrator: Richard Armitage, Stephanie Racine
Publication Date: September 7, 2021
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: Rock Paper Scissors [Amazon]

Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars

The Author: Alice Feeney is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. Rock Paper Scissors is her fourth novel and is being made into a TV series for Netflix by the producer of The Crown. It will be published around the world in 2021.

Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, was an international bestseller, has been translated into over twenty languages, and is being made into a TV series by Warner Bros. starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. His & Hers is also being adapted for screen by Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films.

Alice was a BBC Journalist for fifteen years before becoming an author. She lives in Devon with her family.