Rating:

“But so often, being right means nothing but winning a round of a losing game.”

Author: Rachel Harrison

A selfish young stylist/influencer who loves her content and feels nothing for people, including family, friends, and lovers. A demon-possessed house in need of some TLC. A traumatic childhood. And A LOT of drinking, drugs, and things that go bump in the night and leave smiley faces etched on the walls. And that, dear potential readers, is Play Nice.

A less sarcastic, more complete synopsis looks like this: A divorced mother accused of child abuse and alcoholism finally loses custody and visitation rights for her three daughters. She claims that it was the demon inhabiting her house who perpetuated the abuse. She tried to save her kids. When she dies, the now grown children inherit said demon house. Clio, the influencer, decides to fix it up and flip it for her social media channels and some closure. Of course, there is more to the house than bad memories.

I was excited for this book when Book of the Month highlighted it as one of their October picks. I’ve read Harrison’s Bad Dolls and enjoyed it well enough. As with all short story collections, some are inspired (“Goblin” takes dieting to a whole new level), some are just ok (“Reply Hazy, Try Again”), and some are forgettable (no example, because I forgot the forgettable!) The collection showed talent though as well as the author’s penchant to take a dark, sarcastic look at love, romance, family, and friendship with that modern tang of dissipation. The dissipation I didn’t like – the Nietzsche-esque bleakness focused on secularism, nihilism, and perspectivism. Unfortunately, Rachel Harrison channels this same nothing-means-anything and we-all-hate-each-other mentality to drive Play Nice.

Need me to be plainer? Every character in this book sucks. I cared about none of them, and I actively disliked the protagonist, Clio. For one thing, this “everyone is a social media influencer” trend in books of late is terrible. I don’t care about “influencers.” Nobody does. And let’s face it, very few people make their way in life solely by an Instagram post and some free products from a cheap sponsor. Also . . .I am up enough on things to know that the ‘Gram is no longer where such individuals go. It would be TikTok . . . so this book already dates itself. But, moving on.

We begin the book with Clio calling her dad, claiming to be tired so she doesn’t have to ride the train. He then makes the four-hour (one way!) drive to pick her up and take her home for her mother’s funeral. And she isn’t upset about said funeral (no one is, that’s part of the complicated family dynamics – because fucked up families are essential for horror). She is lazy and selfish and admits it. This is actually one of the least awful things she does in the book. Can the demon just eat her already?

Our chaotic family finally confronts each other. The ending is basically everyone telling everyone else how they hate each other. So now, the two more sensible sisters also have proven themselves unworthy. As has the father, dead mother, dead mother’s boyfriend, and stepmother. Only the boyfriend-to-be is ok, and he can’t carry the book. If only the demon would just eat these people and we could move on!

The demon, sadly, is an afterthought, an allegory that rarely appears and prefers sticky-note messages written in leetspeak to actual hauntings and Exorcist-level interference. This demon is on dial-up, and we’re ready for the Internet to crash.

Through a narrative within a narrative meta-approach (again, so overdone) we eventually get an answer for why the demon is hanging around the house that Clio is fixing up  and what it wants. It takes a long time to get there, with very little happening very slowly, and a lot of toxic family mini-arguments and bitchy feelings. When we do get the answer, the novel does a 180 and suddenly this dangerous entity that really, really, likes emojis is a big metaphor for our brokenness and toxic nature and yada yada yada. The book is suddenly lyrical and deep and meaningful . . . and off on a tangent that is neither genre appropriate nor affecting, since we hate all these people and were really only sticking it out to see the demon get someone. Sigh. NOT recommended.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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