Play Nice

Clio Louise Barnes has built a polished career as a stylist and influencer, but she keeps one thing out of her feeds: as a girl, she lived in a house her mother insisted was possessed by a demon. After her parents' ugly divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters in and told anyone who would listen that something evil shared the rooms with them. Clio's sisters remember it differently, and the courts agreed with them, taking Alex's custody away once she seemed to unravel. Alex still wrote a book about what she said happened there. When Alex dies suddenly, the house comes to the three sisters. They see a place soaked in childhood trauma. Clio sees a renovation project and a ready-made series of house-flipping videos for her followers. She sets the makeover in motion without much dread. But the work stirs up things that were better left buried. Old memories start to surface, and Clio finally opens her mother's book. Soon something in the house begins to make itself known, and the truths it drags into the light could bring down the carefully curated life she has built. Play Nice is a haunted house story with a sharp, darkly funny edge, from the author of Black Sheep and So Thirsty.