Play Nice

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.

• Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
• Published: Penguin Audio on September 9, 2025
• Genre: Horror, supernatural
• Listening length: 10 hours 17 minutes
• Dates listened: 10.19.25 – 10.24.25
• Format: Audiobook (Spotify)
• Narrators: Alex Finke, Natasha Soudek
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• ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• ☠☠
• 🌶🌶

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For as long as I can remember, I have loved horror books and movies. My father was a big horror buff, so that probably has something to do with it, but I have always been addicted to being scared. One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Shining, with Jack Nicholson. That’s really telling my age, isn’t it! lol Telling of my age, and telling of what a twisted person I was, even when I was just a little girl haha. I was obsessed with books by Stephen King and R.L. Stine, and this was before his “Goosebumps” days, so some of those books were pretty dark and scary. I remember when I was about 10 years old, my mother and I went down the road to a garage sale. Like the nerd that I was, I always wanted a book as a treat. Not a toy. Not candy. But a book. At the garage sale, there was a box of books, and inside was The Amityville Horror. I saw the word horror and snatched it up! This book changed my life, and I quickly became obsessed with all things demonic and haunted house-like.

While I know the reviews on Play Nice are a bit mixed, I think I enjoyed it so much because it had Amityville vibes and scratched that itch for me. I thought that the author did a great job building the tension, and though some people didn’t enjoy it, I liked the book-within-a-book narration style the author used for the backstory. There is a lot of familial drama and skeletons in the closet that the horror aspects of the book circle around, but that didn’t bother me. It explained the actions of the characters a bit more to me, who otherwise would have felt totally flat.

I’ll be honest, none of the characters are super likable. The FMC was a bit of a self-centered, egotistical, social media whore, but she was funny at times. Despite that, I still really enjoyed the book. I just kind of debated the entire time whether I wanted everything to turn out ok for her, or if in the end I hoped the demon got her! lol My biggest negative about the book was the ending. I’m still scratching my head a bit over it, and also wondering, “What in the hell happened to Roy?!” Like a lot of the books of this genre, a majority of the book builds up to this huge climax, which happens literally in the last 15% of the book. And this ending was sooooo bland!!! I really thought to myself, “That’s it? Are you serious?” haha

Behind every crazy woman is a man sitting very quietly, saying, “What? I’m not doing anything.”

Maybe I didn’t like the ending, but I did kind of understand it. While this is a horror book, it’s also about family ties and resolving family conflict. The book teaches us a lesson: everyone has demons. They may be supernatural, or they may just be psychological demons. But until you walk in another person’s shoes, you shouldn’t judge them, and you should be compassionate towards them. It’s also a book about the cycle of generational trauma and how that affects us as we become adults, and how painful it is to heal from. Until you can heal, you will continue to battle the demons that were there before you, while also picking up some of your own along the way, and you will never be able to let go and pursue happiness. I deal with this daily, having a mother who has so many personal demons, and I try so hard to break the cycle and separate her demons from my own, while also trying like hell to have compassion and understanding for her.

I read this book for the thrills and chills, which it only disappointed me in that regard towards the end, but I ended up really liking the underlying moral lessons it gives as well. Believe it or not, there was even a smidgen of romance. I gave it a 2 🌶 merely because there were a few mild open-door scenarios. Austin, the love interest, was really the only character that I liked in the book. Anywhoooo, I thought this was a pretty good book, and I’ll definitely be adding Rachel Harrison’s other books to my TBR list now.