Play Nice

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book.

I love Rachel Harrison’s books. They are such a fresh take on a horror subgenre. Cackle tackles witches. Black Sheep (my favorite) is about cults. And So Thirsty is her take on vampires. In Play Nice, we have a haunted house, of sorts.

When their estranged mother dies, Leda, Daphne, and Clio struggle with how to process their loss. Clio, our narrator, decides she’s going to revitalize their childhood home, which is allegedly haunted, and sell it for a profit. Of course, being a horror book, we know there’s no allegedly here. The house is most definitely haunted.

Through the process, Clio is reading the book her mother wrote about the house and her experience living in it with her daughters. Some parts, Clio finds, are fictionalized, but others jog her memory from when she lived there as a child. Her sisters think Clio is losing her mind.

Although I’ve read many more horrifying books about haunted houses, this one was a great dive into memory, psychological terror, and loss.