Play Nice

Play Nice (2025), is a horror suspense novel by Rachel Harrison. The novel follows the Barnes sisters as they deal with the death of their estranged mother, who believed that their childhood home was possessed by a demon. As Clio renovates the house and reads her mother’s self-published account of the haunting, the house’s “sinister presence” begins to manifest in ways that force the sisters to confront Haunted Domestic Space as an Archive for Trauma, The Problem of Contested Memory and Perceptions, and Women’s Likability as a Prerequisite for Empathy and Safety.

This guide uses the 2025 Penguin Random House hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of, gender discrimination, mental illness, disordered eating, child abuse, self-harm, animal death, substance use and dependency, graphic violence, sexual content, cursing, physical abuse, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

Clio Barnes, an influencer in her twenties, is leaving her friend’s party when her sister, Leda, calls; Clio ignores it and dials her other sister, Daphne. Alexandra, their estranged mother, has died, and Clio must go home. The next morning, Clio opens her party gift, which contains a snake charm.

Clio goes to her father James’s home in New Jersey, where he lives with his second wife, Amy. Clio wants to go to Alexandra’s memorial, but her sisters insist that Clio doesn’t recall how bad things were when Alexandra became mentally ill. Clio has a few memories of that time, but she can’t recall how she got the burn on her arm, though everyone blames Alexandra for it. Clio wonders if her mother mentioned it in her book, Demon of Edgewood Drive: The True Story of a Suburban Haunting, but James has made the girls promise to never read it.

At the memorial service, Alexandra’s sister, Helen, insists that Clio thinks she understands Alexandra, but she doesn’t: Alex kept the house on Edgewood Drive to try to rid it of evil, and she died there while making sure the demon stayed “dormant.” Clio decides she will renovate the home, using the project to create content for her social media channels. Daphne and Leda argue with Clio about this decision, but the next morning, Clio goes to the house.

Inside, Clio hears squeaks but can’t find any mice. She finds an old copy of her mother’s book, with a handwritten note to her saying that Alex hopes the book will help Clio understand more about her and her choices, and that Alexandra’s handwritten annotations explain where she took “poetic license” and why. She describes her feelings when she bought the house, her hopes for peace. On her first night in the home, however, she heard evil laughter. Alexandra also writes that James never felt she was a good mother or wife. Sometimes, her storytelling contradicts Clio’s memories. One day, when Clio blamed a creature from her closet for a messy kitchen, Alexandra snapped and made the girls clean it up. Clio cannot remember blaming a strange entity.

Clio goes back to New York City and continues reading. Alexandra writes about seeing things move on their own and a threatening black shadow. Reading what Alexandra wrote about James, Clio wonders if he cheated on Alexandra with Amy, as her mother believed. Clio reads about how one day, Alexandra climbed up to the attic because that’s where the evil lived. In her annotation, she says that she fell trying to get down, and when James brought the girls back, he assumed she was drunk.

While Clio is away, James meets with the exterminator and electrician, and when she returns, he tells her there is no evidence of an infestation. Clio can feel something with her in the house sometimes, but there’s no one there. That night, Clio orders takeout and drinks vodka. Hours later, she’s awoken by a local boy breaking in because his uncle, Austin, dared him to. Clio explains that she’s there to fix up the house. That night, she hears a whispered voice saying, “hello” and that it’s good to see her again. Austin, a 26-year-old nurse, comes over. Clio tells him about the book, and they have sex. Later, she sees “Hello” scrawled on her sketchpad, but she doesn’t remember writing it.

Daphne recounts the time when Alexandra chased Clio with a knife, which jogs Clio’s memory. In the book, Alexandra writes about meeting Father John, who came to bless the house. She knew he needed to come when the girls were away, but Clio got sick that day and had to stay home from school. When Father John arrived, he started coughing. Alexandra got him water, and when she returned, he was gone. Outside, the priest told her about Father Bernard, a man he believed could help, but he wouldn’t say anything else. On the steps, Alexandra found half of a dead mouse covered in spit, as though the priest had coughed it up.

Clio and Austin continue to see each other. One day, she finds sticky mousetraps lined up in the garage and covered in mouse parts. When Clio tells Leda, Leda accuses her of reading Alexandra’s book. Clio denies it but wonders how Leda could know about the mice. Later, she hears demonic laughter and the lights flicker. Clio reads about how Father Bernard arrived early one morning. The priest told Alex that the home was possessed by a demon, and advised hiring an investigative team to confirm. Clio falls asleep after writing “Leave Me Alone” in her sketchpad. When she wakes, she sees a smiley face and the word “no.”

Clio goes to Austin’s house and meets his mother, Dawn, who admits that she was probably the last person to see Alex alive. Alex was disoriented, saying that “our demons” always get us. Austin sleeps at Clio’s, but during the night, she hears the door creak and sees two big eyes looking at her. After she sees a shape like a snake moving inside the wall, Clio and Austin go to his house. The next day, back at her house, Clio finds a sheet of paper with a smiley face and the question, “Remember?” She decides to leave.

Two weeks later, Clio goes to a barbecue at James and Amy’s. She has also ordered a copy of Alex’s book so she can read the missing second half. Clio tells Amy that she knows Amy and James got together before he was divorced. Clio is angry at James for lying. Later, she finds the other half of Alex’s book in his desk. When she confronts him, he takes it and throws it in the firepit.

Clio’s brother-in-law Tommy drives Clio back to Edgewood. She tells the demon that it has to “play nice,” or she’ll leave, and it scratches a huge frowning face into the drywall. Clio returns to New York and calls Daphne, who is still mad that Clio read Alex’s book. That night, there’s a fire at Clio’s apartment building. When she gets to 6 Edgewood, she finds the new copy of her mother’s book that she ordered. She feels a huge shadow behind her and realizes her book has been annotated by the demon. She reads about the series of investigators Alex brought to the house and how James’s lawyers used this against her. Clio told Alex that James wanted the girls to live with him, but the entity wanted them to stay.

Clio recalls Alex’s pink lighter; she calls her aunt Helen to ask about her burn, but Helen warns her about digging up the past. Clio keeps reading, coming to the part about Mariella, the Connecticut psychic. Here, the demon wrote, “Pick my teeth with their bones” (216). Mariella arrived with her team, including Roy, who would eventually become Alexandra’s second husband. That Saturday, Alex told the girls that people were coming to stop the haunting. When Clio ran to her room, Alex followed, still holding the knife she’d been using to cook and hearing the demon’s laughter. Daphne and Leda were terrified, and Clio recalls Alex yelling. During the exorcism, a violent scene ensued. The demon’s annotation reads, “My house skin mine” (237).

On Saturday, Clio meets her sisters in the city. Clio asks about their memory of Alex burning her. Leda says Clio acted out because of Alex, but the truth is that Leda and Daphne saw Clio burn herself. When they told James, he said they had to help him get Clio away from Alex. Clio returns to 6 Edgewood and starts drinking; when Austin arrives, she tries to end their relationship. After he goes, the demon throws the pink lighter at Clio’s head. She holds the flame to her scar for just a moment, and the creature laughs.

James picks Clio up, but his presence is no longer comforting. At his house, she pulls up his Google history, filled with queries about how to commit someone. Roy calls and admits that Alex “embellished” the exorcism for the publisher. Clio invites him to the house. That weekend, the whole family goes to see a counselor. She asks each person to explain why they’re there. James says Alex’s death has been difficult for Clio, and Clio says James wants to have her committed, admitting that she found his Google searches. At home, James confronts Clio, and she accuses him of gaslighting Alex while cheating on her. He says Alex was a terrible wife and mother and got what she deserved. James throws a chair against the wall, while Clio leaves and goes to 6 Edgewood.

When she arrives, she sees Roy’s car but no Roy. She climbs up to the attic with vodka, but when she hears knocking, she falls, breaking her nose. Daphne and Leda arrive, saying she’s livestreaming on Instagram, clearly drunk. Eerie things start happening, and Daphne and Leda fight. When Clio hears the demon’s laughter, she realizes that they are entertaining it. When Clio tries to break up the fight, Leda knocks her out.

When Clio wakes up, Daphne is reading Alex’s book, which Leda admits to having already read. Daphne says she hates Clio, Leda, their mother, and all the lies. Leda says that Daphne and Clio envy her because they’re “unstable.” She admits that she knew about the demon, and she lied about Clio’s burn because Alex verbally abused her. They go to Clio’s room, and when the attic panel slides, Roy falls out. He’s bloody but alive. Leda and Daphne drag him outside. When the demon tries to drag Clio into the walls, she realizes she must “play nice,” offering the demon her necklace with the snake charm. The demon retreats, laughing.

Clio understands that the demon exploited her and Alex’s vulnerabilities, as did James. A year later, Clio launches a clothing line and is dating Austin. While James has apologized for his behavior, she doesn’t need him anymore. A buyer has made an offer on the house, and Clio feels strange about passing it on to someone else. Daphne reminds her that it isn’t her responsibility.