I must admit that my guilty pleasure is watching those old home renovations by TikTok influencers. I also love a haunted house story, so when I read the blurb of Play Nice which seems to combine these, I could not wait to read it!

When Clio’s mother dies, she inherits her childhood home and is determined to renovate it to make some money and get some social media engagement. However, she doesn’t have pleasant memories of the place – her mother wrote a book about her experiences in the house she labelled as ‘possessed’ – is there any truth to the tales?

I really enjoyed Play Nice and actually finished it in a day – it kept me hooked from the outset. I really liked the family dynamic involved – Clio is the youngest of three, and sisters Daphne and Leda are in the story throughout. Clio can be quite hard to empathise with in places – she is spoilt and manipulative and her descent into the madness of the house with drinking and pushing everyone away was hard to read in places. However, it does make her a flawed, interesting and well-rounded main character.

The narrative alternates between Clio’s present experiences in the house and passages from her mother’s book about her time there (some parts with explanations and asides to her daughter which was a nice touch). I liked that this sets Clio up as an unreliable narrator as she doesn’t really remember some of the events or has different memories which leads you to wonder how much is real and how much may have been made up to sell copies of the book. This narrative technique also allows the stakes to build as the story in the book starts to mirror what is happening in the present day.

The haunted elements start slowly, with the usual tropes of a difficult night’s sleep, anxious feelings and things moving. There’s a general sense of unease throughout, which grows to a satisfying and action-packed conclusion.

Overall, Play Nice is a haunted house story for the modern day - full of dysfunctional family dynamics and recommended for your spooky season reads! Thank you to NetGalley & Titan Books for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Think Hallmark movie but make it spooky
Clio is fixing up her late mother’s home and discovers family secrets and lies that threaten her relationships with her dad and sisters.
This is a cozy haunted house novel with a romance subplot that is perfect for spooky season.

Unfortunately there were quite a few grammatical errors/missing words on the ebook..

Another horror win from Rachel Harrison. This time she takes the haunted house trope and makes it her own, I love to read Harrison in the summer as I devour her titles on my summer holidays. A fun horror read for those wanting to try the genre, but be warned once you dip your toe in you'll be hooked.

Play Nice
Rachel Harrison
Titan Books

The story follows Clio and her sisters Leda & Daphne when they inherit their childhood home … a house possessed by a Demon or so their mother claimed.
Deciding their childhood trauma is too painful to face Leda & Daphne let Clio take charge of ‘flipping’ the house.
Clio soon discovers there maybe truth behind her mother’s claims 👿.

The pacing was good, the characters relatable and the atmospheric writing actually had me spooked at times 👻
All in all a fun read which I really enjoyed.

If you like haunted houses and dysfunctional family drama you will love this book.

Thank you to Titan Books & NetGalley for the early copy in exchange for my honest review.

(I received this book from the editor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

This was my last attempt with a book by Rachel Harrison and I can now definitely say that her stories are not for me. I do like the ideas, but the characters get annoying very early very fast and I don’t care what happens to them.
DNR at about 40% of the book.

Finished this in a day and really enjoyed it!

It felt like the perfect amount of horror - there was still a story but lots of spooky bits. Some elements of the story will feel very familiar if you've watched 'The Haunting of Hill House' and there were moments where I felt like I might as well just watch that instead but overall this was a really good book. My first by Rachel Harrison, but definitely not my last!

This book has teeth! I really enjoyed the whole story. I loved the dynamic of the sisters, and the backstory peppered throughout the novel, giving us insight into the girls mother and the history of the house. This novel gives just the right amount of creepy thrill.

I really enjoyed this book, I loved the relationship between the sisters and how that played out in the house. I loved the psychological aspect of the demon as well. It was well written

This was a very highly anticipated read for me as I have enjoyed all of Harrisons work so far.

Play nice took me a while to get into as I was trying to figure out the characters. As usual we have very strong female characters with sassy attitudes which I like. I've read through some of the reviews and found that the people don't like Clio. I did. She's misunderstood and has lots that she can take to therapy.

I found the action in this book lacking. The haunted house didn't really do much for me. I thought it would be scarier/ creepier but it just didn't make my hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There wasn't really much going on just Clio trying to get the house decorated, sleeping with the guy next door and crying to her dad. I found that most of the action took place in the last 80% of the book, and i thought ALAS! Some action. Then that fizzled out and didn't quite hit the spot.

A bit bland for Harrison. I'll wait for the next one. I'm in the minority for this one, but it just didn't work for me.

Play Nice is my second Rachel Harrison book, the first being Black sheep, which I read last year. Honestly I know almost nothing about this going in, though I am a fan of the haunted house/exorcism trope so I was keen to me impressed. I was not disappointed.

The central narrative voice of the main character grabs and does not let go. She is irritating and charming in that unique youngest sister way (for real as the eldest of three girls it was borderline triggering). I found her point of view so fascinatingly real, and there were moments where I could have genuinely punched the air in satisfaction. I enjoyed the sisterly dynamic a lot.

I could, and perhaps should have struggled with the central premise. Its was handled so carefully when needed and completely without sympathy when not. Just like life. In retrospect my critique of Black Sheep was that the tropes were slightly cartoonish. Everything in Play Nice felt real, and hard, and loving and hateful. It was also actually scary, especially towards the end, really great building of tension (importantly for a horror I feel and sadly missing in a lot of modern horror that seeks to shock or disgust rather than introduce actual tension). Sometimes you need a feminist horror allegory that reads like it could have been published in vogue and this is definitely it.

I struggled to engage with the characters, and found it hard to keep track of who was who. Not a book for me.

There is nothing other than applause that I can give this story. It follows Clio, a social media influencer who partly inherits her late mother's house, alongside her sisters - except it's possessed. She finds herself almost literally going to hell and back while trying to renovate the house so she can sell it on and be done with the demons of the past, but hey, nothing's ever that simple.
With repressed feelings, forgotten memories and strained relationships, this story truly captivated me from start to finish, and I really felt like I was being haunted myself.
Rachel Harrison really knows how to write a truly scary story, and I can't possibly give more praise, 5/5 truly.

Rachel Harrison is an incredible writer especially when it comes to women in her stories. Play Nice is a feminist take on the haunted house trope with a splash of possession.
She deals with family dynamics in this story and it hooks you right from the start. You soon realise that the demons in the house aren't the real demons - something I really enjoy about Harrison's books is her level of witty humour that's added to her badass FMC.

Rachel Harrison is our modern millennial horror queen! She delivers again in Play Nice.

I love a haunted house. And Rachel Harrison nailed it with this feminist vibrant take on a spooky story. I loved Clio our FMC she was flawed and a very relatable for being so. She was selfish, inconsiderate and loved attention. But she was also caring, thoughtful and brutally honest. Her relationship with her sisters was refreshing because it was real and raw. It wasn’t just fluffy and fun it was honest.
Now the spooky part, I loved it! It was scary and creepy but not too far fetched as far as horrors go. The demon just wanted company 😈

"One person's truth is another's fiction."

Rachel Harrisons's novel is about Clio Louise Barnes. She is a stylist and influencer, but her biggest secret is that she grew up in a house that was 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. So much so that Alex write a book about the house. After her 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.

Although this book is a haunted house story, it explores the fine line between what is real and what isn't. When Clio tries to renovate the house the strange events she experiences make her question the weight of truth behind her mother's claims. Family dynamics play a huge part in telling this story as some siblings are on the fence about how stable their mother actually was mentally and if there were truths to the claims to the house being possessed. This further sends Clio into a spiral when she experiences things for herself.

The author creates a lot of tension throughout, there is this unease not just from this possible possession but that of family secrets. The story is told mostly through Clio's point of view but there are snippets of Alex's point of view as well.

I enjoyed this fast paced novel. The horror mixed well with the dysfunctional family dynamics and mystery made this an addictive book to read.

Play Nice is a horror novel about a possessed house as a fashion influencer attempts to flip the house where her and her sisters were plagued by their mother's insistence a demon was living there. Clio is a stylist and influencer with a devil-may-care attitude, unlike her sisters Leda and Daphne. When they find out that their estranged mother is dead, they convene at their father and stepmother's house, but there Clio finds out that her sisters don't want anything to do with their mother, not her funeral and not the house that has been left to them. Clio is determined to get the house ready to sell, but as she starts to learn more about what happened there in her childhood, the process isn't as simple as it seemed.

I like Rachel Harrison's style of high concept horror with modern day female protagonists, and Play Nice fits with her usual formula. The book is told from Clio's perspective, so all of the family drama is filtered through her viewpoint. It is purposefully difficult to know what really happened, as the book explores the line between seeming crazy and trying to be believed about demonic possession. There's not a simple answer to who you should sympathise with or what should be believed, but instead there's plenty of classic haunted house 'what is really going on' moments. There's also some commentary on how women are believed or not and the complexities of family dynamics and what matters when someone says they acted out of love.

The plot itself is pretty simple, with plenty of tension and an expected but fitting ending. There are some details or plot points that seemed like they might become relevant again but didn't, and generally I think the influencer side of things could've had a bit more of a role in the book as it felt like there could have been more to say. Overall, Play Nice is another fun horror novel, one that isn't particularly scary but which offers a family drama-centric take on the haunted house subgenre.

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 novel. A sinister presence in the house manifests, revealing ugly truths that threaten to destroy the beautiful life to its very foundation. Beautifully harrowing and emotionally compelling.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐲 𝐯𝐢𝐚 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐑𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐥 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧

Rachel Harrison does it again! I had such a fun time reading this and I’m not gonna lie, some of the haunted house scenes actually creeped me out a bit 👀🫣😈

If you love demons, modern day haunted houses and dysfunctional families you need to pick this book up IMMEDIATELY.

Thank you Titan Books for the early copy in exchange for my honest review

Haunted house ✔️demonic possession ✔️ childhood trauma ✔️ family dysfunction ✔️ COUNT ME IN.

This book unnerved me, it made me physically anxious. I loved the horror element of this book but I wish it had gone even further. I loved the examination of the sibling relationships and the resentment that festers. I loved all the flawed characters in this.

Firstly THANK YOU so much titan & netgalley for allowing me to read this early!!

I could literally cry at how incredible this book is!!

This book is PERFECT for fans of “The Haunting Of Hill House”!!!

Clio is one of the best characters ever written about, the dynamic between the whole family and they’re all so different but are always there no matter what is everything I needed!!

The easiest 5 stars of the year for me I cannot wait for everyone else to experience this book!!