Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

January 02, 2026

The people are awful but I couldn't stop reading.

Released September 2025

Source: Book of the Month Club (you can join here using my referral link)
Get it at your local library or see more @ Goodreads

Chappell Roan could've soundtracked this one.

"I love being bitter

It makes me feel better

Bitter feels better than tryna get better and I

Yes, I love being bitter

But it makes me feel weathered

Now I'm sick in the head and it's not even my fault"

I've read much of Rachel Harrison's work and this one harkens back to the bitterness between the friends featured in The Return. That one wasn't my favorite, but I may reread and may have a change of heart. I think I'm digging these bitter characters lately. This time around it focuses on a family with many secrets and secret resentments while a demon may or may not be thriving as they emotionally destroy themselves.

There's a lot of rage and hurt behind this story and all of it is justified because it's easy to refuse to believe a woman and call her crazy and instead shift blame everywhere else except where it belongs. Grrrr. Anyhow, the main character Clio is the beautiful, youngest daughter in a family of three daughters. She is a very successful influencer (le sigh) who has curated a "beautiful" life. At least on the surface. Their estranged mother has died when the book opens, and Clio is the only one who attends the funeral and visits their old demonic childhood home where terrible things that she can't remember supposedly happened. She's determined to renovate it for some social media clout but once there she finds a copy of her mother's memoir that they've all promised never to read. This one is annotated by her mother. She reads it because why shouldn't she? Her family are being shits. I would've read it too. Soon she begins to question everything she's been told about her childhood. Add in some creepy goings-on and that possible demonic presence and it's hard to stop reading.

Clio is pretty spoiled and self-centered and even though her family like to think they're better than all that they're pretty bitter, awful and/or self-centered too. There are a few good guys here who should've run for the hills and I kind of felt bad for them being caught up in this toxic mess. So yeah, you may be rooting for the demon at many points but that's what makes it fun, right?

This is a quick read that's as much about family messes as it is about demonic houses and I have to admit that it's kind of fun watching them all unravel.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Publisher Plot 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.

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