In horror fiction, few things are more unsettling than the slow revelation that the place you call home might not be as safe as you believed. Rachel Harrison’s latest offering, Play Nice, masterfully transforms the familiar haunted house trope into something far more insidious—a meditation on family trauma, inherited pain, and the sinister ways our past refuses to stay buried.
The story follows Clio Louise Barnes, a picture-perfect lifestyle influencer whose carefully curated existence begins to crumble when she inherits her childhood home on Edgewood Drive. What should be a simple house flip for content creation becomes something far more dangerous when Clio discovers that her late mother’s claims about a demon inhabiting the house might not have been the ravings of a woman in crisis, but the desperate warnings of someone who knew exactly what she was dealing with.
A Gothic Tale for the Instagram Age
Harrison demonstrates remarkable skill in weaving contemporary anxieties about authenticity and social media performance into classic gothic horror elements. Clio’s profession as an influencer serves as more than just modern window dressing—it becomes integral to the horror itself. The demon doesn’t simply want to terrorize; it wants attention, engagement, the very currency that drives Clio’s professional life. This brilliant parallel creates a horror that feels distinctly of our time while honoring the genre’s deep roots.
The author’s prose crackles with sharp wit and genuine emotion, particularly in her portrayal of family dynamics. Harrison has a gift for capturing the specific cruelty that can exist between sisters, the way shared trauma can both bind and poison relationships. The dialogue feels authentic and lived-in, with each character possessing a distinct voice that reveals their psychological landscape.
Narrative Structure That Mirrors Memory
One of the novel’s greatest strengths lies in its structural sophistication. Harrison employs a dual narrative approach, alternating between Clio’s present-day investigation and excerpts from her mother Alexandra’s memoir, Demon of Edgewood Drive: The True Story of a Suburban Haunting. This technique brilliantly mirrors how memory works—unreliable, fragmented, and subject to revision. The reader becomes an active participant in parsing truth from fiction, sanity from madness.
The mother’s memoir sections, complete with handwritten annotations that may or may not be supernatural in origin, are particularly effective. They reveal Alexandra not as the unhinged woman her family remembers, but as someone desperately trying to protect her daughters from something genuinely malevolent. These passages achieve genuine pathos while maintaining an undercurrent of ambiguity that keeps readers guessing.
Character Development That Cuts Deep
Clio emerges as a complex protagonist whose journey from skepticism to belief mirrors the reader’s own experience. Harrison avoids the trap of making her either completely sympathetic or entirely unlikable. Instead, she presents a woman whose emotional defenses have calcified into something approaching cruelty, yet whose vulnerability becomes increasingly apparent as the supernatural elements intensify.
The supporting cast, particularly Clio’s sisters Daphne and Leda, are rendered with similar complexity. Their resentment toward both their mother and Clio feels earned rather than contrived, rooted in genuine childhood trauma rather than plot convenience. The family therapy scenes are particularly well-crafted, revealing layers of buried resentment and competing narratives about their shared past.
Supernatural Elements That Serve the Story
Where many contemporary horror novels stumble is in either over-explaining their supernatural elements or leaving them frustratingly vague. Harrison strikes an elegant balance, providing enough concrete detail to make the demonic presence feel real while maintaining enough ambiguity to preserve the horror. The demon’s methods—communication through drawings, manipulation of the physical environment, and its apparent hunger for attention—feel both original and grounded in established supernatural tradition.
The horror escalates organically, building from subtle unease to genuine terror without relying on cheap jump scares or gratuitous violence. Harrison understands that the most effective horror often comes from the fear of losing one’s grip on reality, and she exploits this brilliantly throughout the narrative.
Themes That Resonate Beyond Genre
Beneath its supernatural trappings, Play Nice functions as a sophisticated exploration of intergenerational trauma and the ways family secrets can poison relationships across decades. The novel asks difficult questions about mental health stigma, the unreliability of memory, and the particular burden placed on women who dare to claim they’ve experienced something others refuse to believe.
Harrison’s treatment of these themes never feels heavy-handed or preachy. Instead, she allows them to emerge naturally from the story, trusting her readers to engage with the deeper implications of her narrative choices.
Areas Where the Foundation Cracks
Despite its many strengths, Play Nice by Rachel Harrison is not without flaws. The pacing occasionally suffers in the middle section, where some scenes feel more focused on establishing atmosphere than advancing the plot. Additionally, certain secondary characters, particularly Clio’s boyfriend Austin, feel somewhat underdeveloped, existing more to serve plot functions than as fully realized individuals.
The resolution, while emotionally satisfying, may leave some readers wanting more concrete answers about the supernatural elements. However, this ambiguity feels intentional rather than accidental, serving the novel’s broader themes about the impossibility of ever fully understanding another person’s experience.
Harrison’s Growing Mastery
Having established herself with previous novels like The Return, Cackle, So Thirsty, and Such Sharp Teeth, Harrison continues to evolve as a writer, demonstrating increasing confidence in her ability to blend humor with genuine scares. Play Nice represents perhaps her most mature work to date, showing a willingness to sit with uncomfortable emotions rather than deflecting them entirely through humor.
The author’s background in both horror and contemporary fiction serves her well here, allowing her to create characters that feel grounded in reality even as they navigate increasingly surreal circumstances. Her voice remains distinctive—sharp, funny, and unexpectedly moving when the story demands it.
The Verdict on This Demonic Dwelling
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison succeeds as both effective horror and compelling family drama, creating a reading experience that lingers long after the final page. Harrison has crafted a novel that honors the haunted house tradition while updating it for contemporary anxieties about family, authenticity, and the stories we tell ourselves about our past.
The book will particularly appeal to readers who appreciate horror that prioritizes psychological complexity over simple scares. Those who enjoyed recent works like Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia or The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones will find much to appreciate in Harrison’s approach to blending family trauma with supernatural elements.
While not perfect, Play Nice by Rachel Harrison represents a significant achievement in contemporary horror fiction, proving that the haunted house story still has new rooms to explore. It’s a novel that trusts its readers’ intelligence while delivering the visceral thrills that genre fans crave.
Similar Reads to Explore
For readers who enjoyed Play Nice, consider these complementary titles:
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Another atmospheric tale of family secrets and supernatural threat
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – The gold standard of psychological haunted house horror
- Little Eve by Catriona Ward – Dark family dynamics with supernatural undertones
- The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell – Victorian gothic horror with contemporary psychological insight
- The Broken Girls by Simone St. James – Mystery and supernatural elements woven through family trauma
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison stands as a worthy addition to the horror canon, proving that sometimes the most frightening demons are the ones that have been living in our homes all along, waiting patiently for us to finally acknowledge their presence.