Play Nice — Book Review
Ayo, back with another Rachel Harrison book review!
If you read my The Return review, you may have expected this when I confessed to binging all her books while going through a break-up a while ago and that I heard her read live from this book at Stokercon 2025. So here we go!
(Also don’t forget, my new collection,Whims of the Night Winds, is live! Be sure to check it out!)
The Author
Rachel Harrison is the New York Times bestselling author of Play Nice, So Thirsty, Black Sheep, Such Sharp Teeth, Cackle, and The Return, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and in her debut collection Bad Dolls. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and their cat/overlord. — Harrison’s bio on the Penguin Random House website
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The Book
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A woman must confront the demons of her past when she attempts to fix up her childhood home in this devilishly clever take on the haunted house novel from the author of Black Sheep and So Thirsty.
Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parents’ messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped her of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.
After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, a sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation. — Penguin Random House website
The Review
I absolutely loved this book. Harrison explores fractured familial relationships and throws in a demon-infested house too. Clio is one of three sisters in a family where everyone plays a role in order to avoid rocking the boat. Clio is stuck in the flacky, cheerful daughter, daddy’s little girl, the one who parties. When she decides to dig into her now dead mother’s past, she discovers more than she bargained for.
Just like with The Return, Harrison explores imperfect relationships and flawed characters in Play Nice. I absolutely love how Harrison wrote the dialogue and the unreliable recollection of Clio’s childhood based on a book written by her mother, her own memories, and the half-truths others tell her.
As one of three daughters, I definitely could relate to the family dyanmics in Play Nice — where each sister seem sto have her role in the family and tries to help the balance so as not to disrupt the fragile peace.
It’s such a dynamic haunted house story and I couldn’t put it down. I loved the delicious braid of family horror, supernatural danger, and Clio’s character growth in the face of danger and disapproval (maybe even scarier than demons). The suspense and pacing was perfectly balanced and I loved the slow reveals of Clio’s demon-haunted childhood.
If you enjoyed The Return as much as I did, then you definitely need to check out Play Nice.
10/10
x PLM
