This article first appeared in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Sept. 7, 2025
What makes a house more than a home? When does a house become a protagonist instead of a setting? The Palace of Versailles, Philip Johnson’s The Glass House and Frida Kahlo’s Caza Azul are all iconic homes. But none of them will get in your head like the bloodthirsty house in Rachel Harrison’s latest horror book, “Play Nice.”
Oozing blood and with many bumps in the night, Harrison artfully blends dread, passion and humor to give her readers a mixture of the Upside Down from “Stranger Things” and a Barbie Dreamhouse of fright.
After Clio’s parents’ messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved a young Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so her mom told them, as well as anyone else who would listen (including a priest, who runs out of the house after being invited to perform an exorcism).
Eventually the courts give Clio’s father custody, but Alex, as women who are not believed often do, persists — in the form of turning her true story into a book about the house, “The Demon of Edgewood Drive.”
When Alex dies, Clio inherits the house without having read the book, as she promised her dad and sisters that she would not. She thinks of the ensuing renovation as a fun flip to make some cash, and takes it upon herself to fix it up for sale.
As Clio gets to work, strange events start to unfold. This is no spoiler, but she ends up reading “The Demon of Edgewood Drive” as her memories of the house return. For the first time, Clio finds herself questioning everything she believed about her mother — and wondering if the true story has been hidden all this time. Maybe her mother was not lying and not a mentally ill alcoholic, as she had been led to think.
Marketed as a book for Millennials, this will appeal to other generations as well, though some of the day-to-day downtroddenness due to societal ills is certainly in the Millennial wheelhouse. The book’s rich sense of place, shifting perspectives, and its book-within-a-book structure blend Clio’s chilling haunted house tale with excerpts from Alex’s memoir.
Touted as a horror novel, some readers might disagree. It’s not scary as much as creepy, and it’s not horror in the way that keeps a reader up at night, unable to sleep. It’s more of a mystery shrouded in the reality of oppression. (Side note: If you ever needed to know the difference between a demon and a poltergeist, this book serves as a users’ manual for those, and more.)
The horror is that it mimics real life mental health issues and family trauma a bit too closely. So much, in fact, that this book needs one giant trigger warning: “If your family has ever had issues, or if you are a woman trying to navigate the world, beware.”
“Play Nice” might appeal to readers because it’s so relatable — as is Clio, a hard-working influencer in the fashion industry going about her day, or trying to anyway. Like many women, she exudes confidence for miles but internally struggles with self doubt and imposter syndrome.
Through sharp writing and dark wit, Harrison manages to work a quasi-love/sex story into the mix, while readers hold their collective breath to see what will happen next. But it’s the slow-burn fright — much like someone slowly affected by declining mental health — that readers will find most harrowing.
Often, feminist horror centers on women who are strong, complex and fully realized characters but Clio is imperfect and impulsive, troubled and impetuous and her challenges are authentic.
“Play Nice” lingers not just as a tale of a haunted house, but as a reflection on what it means to survive when the real monsters are woven through society.