Play Nice

I loved this book and was completely invested. I was a little disappointed at the end I felt that there were several loose ends and some storylines wrapped quickly with little explanation or follow up that I would have loved. But overall this is an awesome book for Halloween time period and really wonderful writing.

What do you get when you cross a fashion influencer interested in shifting her brand and a Demon attached to a house she wants to flip? An insufferable main character with an even worse family and very very little time dealing with a demon and the house.

Going into this book, I was excited. I love comedy horror and I don't mind an insufferable main character. The issue is, this book did not feel like a horror. Clio's estranged mother dies and leaves her old demon possessed house to her three daughters. Leda (oldest) and Daphne (middle) want to sell the house outright, but Clio wants to try her hand at flipping it. Only, what she doesn't realize is that she is going to unlock hidden demons and realize that the demon in the house was always real and wanted her.

What did I like about this book? The excerpts from Alexandra's (mom's) book she wrote about the house were by far the more interesting parts. It's really the only thing that kept me going with this one and honestly, the only reason it's getting 2 stars.

What I didn't like? The characters were all frustrating, shallow, annoying, and gave me zero reason to root or care for just about anything they did. Somethings didn't even make sense at times and nothing ever came of anything. It felt ... pointless. More like I was watching a reenactment of a reality TV show with low ratings than reading a horror novel.

The messaging and "feminism" in this book were ... rant inducing to say the least.

The most "progressive" and oldest sister, Leda, continues to slut shame, take the side of their dad, and refuses to stand up for her sisters, and finds ways to blame everything on their mom. She clearly runs her household in an authoritative manner even controlling her own husband. She has a line where she calls tarot reading a "gateway drug" into the "occult" and is furious that her husband dared to have a reading done at her mothers funeral. [She did not go to this funeral. Only Clio went and Tommy (Leda's husband) went.

The middle sister, Daphne, has zero personality. None. She is a neutral zone, the conflict resolution solver, that's it. I could replace her with a chair and nothing would change. She has a girlfriend and dad doesn't seem to care. Until the end, when she admits that she *knows* he hates it but he won't ever show it.

The youngest, our MC Clio, only wants attention. Literally, she craves attention. That's why the demon wants her. She looks the most like their mother and she also hates on women, but she also hates on men. At the start of the book she literally targets a man, ragebaits him, invites him to her home, then kicks him out half way there. All because she was bored. Another woman, the only time her being Bi is mentioned or comes up btw, gives her a gift. She claims they must hate her or love her style. She ends up friends with her off page. Then says she *must* have a heterosexual crush on her. She's also cool with cheating. Uses her tears to get her way. There's a lot.

We get going in the story and nothing much happens outside family drama. Which is fine. I love me some family drama. What I don't like? Is being told I'm reading a book about an influencer flipping a haunted house to sell and what do I get? Barely anytime in the house, hardly any haunting, just painting. The house flipping was just her meeting people off page to do work and she painted off and on. That was it. You want "spooky"? You have to rely on the pages of Mom's book to get that.

Everything is thrown at you, there's no suspense, no reason to care about anyone. Amy, the stepmom, is just there. She does nothing. She quite literally is on page to play the part of the Affair Dad had on Mom and why they split. Dad is a one note guy. You can smell his bullshit from a mile away. For me, nothing was shocking, nothing was crazy, and I was hoping for actual demon shit. We got 1% of demon shit. They didn't stop it. They just gave it a necklace, walked away, and sold the house to the next unsuspecting couple. Did the characters change? No. Not at all.

After all the bullshit they put the MC through (cause yeah her family is worse than her) She was still made to APOLOGIZE to her shit dad for things that were not her fault to appease her sisters who KNOW the truth and refuse to demonize dad. [Albeit it was those shitty influencer apologies so I guess a win?]. They still blame mom for literally everything. I'm not even joking. The MC got a boyfriend. Something she was so against but i guess that's it. That's the change. She went back to being a fashion influencer. Her friends came back. Her family is still shit.

Boring, unsatisfying, and annoying. But I was determined to finish it because I hoped, longed, and begged for this book to at least end well. To which it did not.

this took a while for me to get through, I would get frustrated with the main character a few times. However it ended up being a good grief story of losing a mom you didn't think you would miss, but also how people grieve different. The sisters working through their own problems and the haunted house holding on to that trauma was an interesting take.

Everyone loved this and not sure why, hardly anything happened the whole first half. And very little in last half.

Rachel Harrison takes the haunted house trope and twists it into something far more real. In Play Nice, the horror is not just what lives in the walls. It is what lives inside you. Clio returns to her childhood home with a plan to renovate and rebrand it for content. What she finds instead is a slow unraveling of memory, family history, and the uneasy question of whether her mother was right all along. The house does not just feel haunted. It feels tailored to each person it appears to. Each manifestation seems tied to something buried deep in that individual. It is as if the demon has been waiting for the right person to resurface. That idea carries the novel. Trauma becomes tangible, physical, and shapes what the characters see and experience. It is a clever lens for horror. Though it does raise questions that never quite settle. The rules of what is happening feel slippery. A priest vomiting a mouse, peanut butter smeared across a kitchen, and a demonic presence that predates the house itself. These moments blur the line between metaphor and literal horror in a way that can feel inconsistent rather than mysterious. Where the story finds its strongest footing is in the family dynamic. The mother’s life lands with a familiar weight. A woman worn down by custody battles, perfectionism, and survival leaves behind pieces of herself that her daughters never fully understand. That absence becomes one of the more haunting elements of the book. Not the demon, but the gaps in what was never said. The sisters carry that damage forward while circling each other with longstanding tension created by a lifetime of judgement. Watching Clio recognize her own patterns and choose to stop feeding them brings a satisfying shift in her arc. The resolution leans more toward emotional closure than narrative clarity. Clio steps into a healthier version of herself and claims a future that feels lighter. Some of the bigger questions about the house and its origins remain open. The choice to walk away from the house instead of reclaiming it as something healed may divide readers. It reads as release. It leaves behind the sense that something unresolved still lingers within those walls. The audiobook adds another layer to the experience. Alex Finke and Natasha Soudek deliver performances that pull out the emotional strain in each scene. The tension, the exhaustion, and the unraveling all come through in their voices with a precision that keeps the story engaging from start to finish. Play Nice is a fast and accessible listen with an intriguing angle on horror. It invites the reader to be reflective more than fearful. Some readers may feel frustrated that the haunted house mythology does not fully come together. This story will resonate with readers who like the twist of exploring how real life trauma has lasting effects on family, memory, personal growth, and self-aware healing.