Kate’s Review: “Play Nice”

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Book: “Play Nice” by Rachel Harrison

Publishing Info: Berkley, September 2025

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: 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.

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 parent’s 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 Alex 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, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

I remember being a teenager and reading about The Amityville Horror case, not the actual book itself (though I DID read that years later), but in some random haunted house book. For the unfamiliar, the run down is that a young family moved into a house on Long Island that had been the site of a mass murder years before (committed by the oldest son of the Defeo family, Ronny). The Lutzes started experiencing horrible things, then moved out after not even a month because it was SO HAUNTED. I also remember renting the original film with Margot Kidder and James Brolin and watching it on the tiny TV in the basement of my childhood home, eating take out tacos and banished away because I was the only horror fan in the family.

And I remember finding out as an adult that it was all bullshit, made up by the Lutz Family as well as the lawyers for Ronnie Defeo. It’s a fun story, but it’s built on lies. “Play Nice” by Rachel Harrison clearly has some influences from and shades of “Amityville”, and the description made me REALLY excited to read it, especially since I have genuinely enjoyed every horror novel that Harrison has written. And “Play Nice” is now my favorite of her books, because not only does it have shades of “Amityville”, it is also a very emotional story about unpacking family trauma and long festering family dysfunction.

Our main character is Clio, a free spirited influencer who has tried to build a carefree and adventurous life after a difficult childhood, where she and her sisters Lena and Daphne and mother Alex moved into a house after her parent’s divorce that Alex claimed to be haunted by a demon. She even wrote a book about it that became a cult hit. The problem is that Clio and her sisters remember it differently, with an abusive alcoholic mother terrorizing them until she lost custody, and they cut off contact. Until her death. Clio, being the youngest, remembers the least, and while her sisters refuse to attend the funeral, Clio does, and then inherits the house from her childhood. She thinks fixing it up would be a good content opportunity and moves in. And then it all starts to unravel. So this could very easily be solely a haunted house story, as Harrison gets back to her early horror roots with “Play Nice”. It has genuinely horrifying moments, descriptions, and a slow building up dread that makes the reader want to keep reading… while also being very, very unnerving and creepy. I loved having both Clio’s present day experiences as well as the excerpts from the book (with personalized annotations from Alex for Clio, exposing the untrue things with a bitter commentary). As a straight up horror story it works really well.

But Harrison has always been someone who likes to tap into the messiness of being a woman in modern society and the way they aren’t allowed to be imperfect without scrutiny, and in “Play Nice” we REALLY dive into imperfect women who are complicated, maddening, but so well rounded because of it. This is not only a haunted house story, it’s also a story about childhood trauma, unclear memories, deep familial dysfunction, and trying to parse out truth from lies that others tell and that we tell ourselves. Clio is such a fascinating main character because I genuinely had a difficult time with her, but wholly understood why she is the way she is. Harrison has created an honest and sometimes painful story about a woman trying to uncover darkness within her family, and there are few clear answers and a whole lot of nuance, which I really appreciated. Alex is monstrous in a lot of ways, but it’s also not as simple an explanation as, say, a demonic presence that would explain everything. I thought that at times it was a very raw story, and it packs a wallop because of it.

“Play Nice” is Rachel Harrison’s best horror novel yet. It’s scary and deeply emotional, and I highly recommend it for Halloween.

Rating 9: Harrison effortlessly creates a haunted house story that tackles family dysfunction, childhood trauma, and the demons that haunt us, not matter what kind that may be.

Reader’s Advisory:

“Play Nice” is included on the Goodreads lists “Ultimate Female Horror Authors”, and “Horror Books 2025”.