Play nice by Rachel Harrison - dark and atmospheric horror / Books Teacup and Reviews

Play Nice is emotionally charged , dark and atmospheric horror that tears open the glossy veneer of family, memory, and womanhood.

Play nice

Play nice by Rachel Harrison

Publication Date : September 9, 2025

Publisher : Berkley

Read Date : October 17, 2025

Genre : Horror

Pages : 336

Source : Many thanks to Publisher for eARC via NetGalley

Synopsis

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

Play Nice follows Clio Barnes, a thirty-something influencer who seems to have it all-style, success, and a perfectly curated life online. But when she learns that her estranged mother, Alexandra, has died, the cracks in her picture-perfect world begin to show.

Alexandra was never what you’d call a “good mother.” Or at least, that’s what Clio and her older sisters- Leda and Daphne -were always told. Clio’s childhood memories of her are blurry, twisted by time, her father and her sisters. The one thing Clio remembers vividly is their mother’s obsession with the haunted house at Edgewood Drive- the same house she claimed was cursed, and the same house that led Clio’s father to fight for custody and cut Alexandra out of their lives completely.

Now, Alexandra is gone. And in a cruel twist, the house that tore them apart has been left to them.

While Leda and Daphne want nothing to do with the funeral, the house, or their mother’s memory, Clio goes against their wishes and their father’s warnings and goes to see for herself. She arrives at Edgewood intending to renovate it for content and closure, but what she finds instead is a chilling tangle of family secrets, unresolved trauma, and supernatural horror that slowly consumes her.

Writing and Pacing

The writing is as sharp and addictive as ever. It is fast-paced, accessible, and darkly introspective. The first ten chapters are pure setup, establishing the Barnes family dynamics and Clio’s influencer life. But once Clio moves into the Edgewood house, things get weird. And good-weird. The discovery of Alexandra’s hidden memoir, the one the sisters swore never to read, adds a fantastic layer of tension. Through alternating perspectives between Clio’s present-day experiences and her mother’s memoire and her annotations in it, Harrison peels back layers of lies and distorted memories, blurring the line between truth and fiction. It’s the kind of slow-burn horror that doesn’t rely on jump scares but instead builds a suffocating sense of dread.

Characters and Themes

Every member of the Barnes family is beautifully flawed—broken, selfish, scarred, and utterly believable. This is a story about a haunted house, yes, but it’s even more about a haunted family.

At its heart, Play Nice is about generational trauma– the way pain, lies, and guilt seep from one generation into the next. Alexandra’s chapters are heartbreaking; her story isn’t just about demons from another realm, but about the demons that come in the shape of abusive fathers, gaslighting husbands, and a society quick to label emotional women as “crazy.”

Her downfall is engineered by her manipulative husband and that made my blood boil. The way he twisted the narrative to paint himself as the hero while destroying Alexandra’s credibility was infuriating. And the worst part? Everyone bought it. Including her daughters. When Clio starts having similar “episodes,” history repeats itself. Her pain and fear are dismissed as hysteria, proving that the real horror isn’t always supernatural—it’s systemic disbelief and emotional erasure.

Each sister is a study in trauma response:

Leda, the eldest, clings to perfection. Her life looks ideal—loving husband, beautiful home—but she’s cold, rigid, and terrified of imperfection. Her need for control is both her shield and her cage.
Daphne, the middle child, is the peacekeeper. She absorbs everyone’s pain, smoothing over cracks until she’s hollow. Her unraveling in the climax is shocking yet deeply earned.
Clio, the youngest, is the “fun” one—the influencer, the attention-seeker, the mirror image of her mother. Everyone infantilizes her, dismisses her feelings, and tells her what she remembers isn’t real. Watching her reclaim her identity and stop molding herself to fit others’ expectations was deeply satisfying.

The sisters’ differing memories of their childhood and their mother highlight one of the book’s strongest themes: the subjectivity of memory. It’s haunting how easily perception can be manipulated, how a narrative can be rewritten until even you doubt your truth.

Clio’s influencer persona adds a clever, modern edge to the horror. Her curated, perfect digital life contrasts starkly with her messy, haunted reality. Author subtly critiques how social media amplifies performance, how we all wear masks, chasing validation while ignoring the rot underneath.

Clio’s awareness of this façade makes her both unreliable and painfully real. She’s not a likable protagonist all the time, but she’s human. And that’s what makes her arc powerful.

The Demon and the House

The Edgewood house is practically a character in itself—moody, manipulative, sentient. Harrison uses it not just as a setting, but as a metaphor for inherited pain. The demon doesn’t just haunt, it feeds, exploiting emotional wounds until they burst open.

The final third of Play Nice is sheer chaos—in the best way. Tense, shocking, and impossible to look away from. I was convinced Clio wouldn’t survive it, not after the emotional and psychological torment she endured. But the revelations that come after the forced therapy scene? Jaw-dropping. Harrison doesn’t go for neat resolutions, but the messy ending fits the story. It’s not about being fixed. It’s about survival, truth, and hard-won honesty.

While it doesn’t have the neat, satisfying closure of Black Sheep, it’s still an incredible ride. The ending, chaotic as it is, feels true to the story. The Barnes sisters may not get their house as they planned, but the truth got them closer, and that’s satisfying.

Play Nice is emotionally charged , dark and atmospheric horror that tears open the glossy veneer of family, memory, and womanhood. If you like your horror with emotional weight, generational trauma, and a dash of influencer satire, and haunted house, Play Nice is for you.