Emily has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, MS, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from GCSU in Milledgeville, GA, home of Flannery O’Connor. She spends her free time reading, watching horror movies and musicals, cuddling cats, Instagramming pictures of cats, and blogging/podcasting about books with the ladies over at #BookSquadGoals (www.booksquadgoals.com). She can be reached at emily.ecm@gmail.com.
Haunted house books aren’t new. It’s a whole subgenre of horror fiction, and I have read and recommended plenty of them. So what makes a haunted house book worth reading? What makes it stand out? The thing about haunted house stories is that they’re also family stories. It’s about the people who live in the house, their traumas, their relationships, and how those things are magnified and reflected back to them through the supernatural things going on in their home. If you’re invested in the family, you’re invested in the haunting. Rachel Harrison’s new novel, Play Nice, nails the scares and the family drama, making it basically the perfect haunted house story.
Play Nice by Rachel Harrison
Meet Clio Barnes. If you’ve seen her on social media, she leads the glossiest life with the sweetest brand deals an influencer could imagine. She’s got friends who are all about having fun, and she has no shortage of hook-ups. But none of these people know the truth about Clio. She grew up in a house that was possessed by a demon, a demon who seemed to have eyes especially for her. Why did the demon do what it did to her and her family when she was only a child? Was it desperation on its part? Or was it just bored? Clio hasn’t bothered to explore any of those questions, because she’s just trying to move on with her life as a stylist and an influencer, leaving the past in the past.
Horror readers know the past can never stay in the past forever. Especially not when demons are involved. When Clio’s mother, Alex, dies a sudden and unexpected death, Clio goes back to her hometown to attend her mother’s funeral and tend to the family drama she tried so hard to leave behind. You see, Alex’s mother always claimed their house was haunted, but Clio’s sisters never believed it was true. And neither did her father. And neither did the courts when they awarded Clio’s father full custody and deemed Alex mentally unfit to be a guardian to her three children.
Now Alex’s haunted home has been passed down to Clio and her sisters, along with something else that will change everything: Alex’s memoir, annotated especially for Clio. Clio’s family warns her not to read the book, but despite their warnings, Clio feels drawn to the words her mother wrote. She remembers her childhood one way, but the book paints a completely different story. One that makes Clio question everything she thought she knew about her mother, her father, herself, and the house where she grew up.
Clio’s dynamics with her sisters, her father, and stepmother are a lot of what drives this story. What I found most interesting, though, is the way this book explores the nature of memory. Even those of us who didn’t grow up in haunted houses can relate to the weirdness of childhood memory. Some things feel like vivid memories, but are those really things that you remember yourself? Or are those “memories” just stories that you’ve always been told? As Clio slowly uncovers the truth about her mother and father and the haunted house that was partially responsible for tearing their family apart, everything she thought she knew to be fact begins to crumble. It’s fascinating to read as the revelations unfold.
If you love haunted house novels, you gotta read this book!
English (US) · 