Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
/Available now
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From the Publisher:
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.
This book is dark, a little messed up, and full of unlikable characters! I love a Gothic horror. Hand me a book with a haunted house, an unreliable narrator, and a dysfunctional family and I know I’m in for a good time. Play Nice contains all this and more. When Clio inherits her mother’s supposedly possessed house, she doesn’t shy away from diving into renovation projects for both social media content and a big financial return. Like the house, Clio is also a bit of a mess. She struggles with relationships, relies on her dad to fix her problems, and her career as a social media influencer has her viewing much of her life as transactional. She also has very few memories of her life during the time her mother owned the possessed Edgewood home. When Clio discovers a copy of her mother’s book, Demon of Edgewood Drive, Clio has to wrestle with how her own limited memories compare to her mother’s, admittedly, embellished take on the chaos and danger that the house inflicted on her family. Not to mention, Clio’s two sisters and father have another version of events from that time as well. With all of the unreliable narrators and different versions of events, it’s hard to tell if anything that is happening to Clio is real, or fueled by a lack of sleep and too much booze. It’s quite a wild ride and I flew through this one in less than a day. I love the messiness of all the characters, the way parts of Alex’s annotated book are woven within the story, and how the book ends in just the right way.
If you’re looking for a scary and twisted haunted house story with a dysfunctional family, this one has you covered. If you’d like to add this incredible book to your shelf, you can click on the cover above or here for ordering information.
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