By LINDY RYAN
Charge your phones and dim your ring lights, horror fans. From Rachel Harrison comes PLAY NICE, a wickedly sharp haunted house tale in which the deadliest things might be the memories you can’t filter away. After her estranged mother’s death, Clio Louise Barnes, the queen of curated content, returns to her childhood home – infamous for her late mother’s claims of demonic possession – with plans to renovate it into her next viral project. But as she tears down the walls, she unearths more than outdated wallpaper, including buried family secrets, an annotated copy of her mother’s novel and a presence with a taste for peanut butter and mayhem. The more she digs, the more the house reminds her that some hauntings are personal.
RUE MORGUE recently had the opportunity to sit down with Harrison to chat about PLAY NICE, now available from Berkley.
PLAY NICE blends the classic haunted house setup with the modern world of influencer culture. How did you approach balancing timeless supernatural horror with such a contemporary, social-media-driven character?
I was very intentional with my protagonist, Clio, being an influencer because I knew I wanted to explore perception [and] the “crazy woman” aspect of the haunted house trope. It made sense to me that someone who, as a child, saw their mother lose control of her image, would then grow up to be hyperaware of how important it is to keep that control and present a very curated version of herself to the world. It’s a defense mechanism. I write contemporary horror, and social media is a major facet of contemporary life, but its purpose in the novel is to serve the themes, and as a little bit as a dare for readers to judge Clio.
Clio is a narrator who’s curating her life for public consumption while confronting private trauma. What interested you in exploring that tension between authenticity and performance?
Rachel Harrison, author of “PLAY NICE”
We perform every day of our lives. In my experience as someone who came of age during the early aughts tabloid era, I have an inherent fear of judgment and public scrutiny. I appreciate how social media allows us to take control over our own narratives, but it didn’t solve cruelty, just shifted it from cheap magazine covers to anonymous comments. The pressure for us to be perfect to avoid shame and judgment has only been exacerbated by the fact that we now all have audiences. Clio has a bigger reach as an influencer, but anyone who steps out the door in the morning must make a choice about who they’re going to be, what they’re going to present to the world and what they want to keep private. It’s universal, but also deeply personal.
The childhood home in PLAY NICE is more than just a backdrop. It’s a vessel for grief, memory and inherited fear. How did you approach developing the house as a character in its own right?
This book was very much inspired by The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist; I just love that ’70s aesthetic. Listen, I adore a grand Victorian or sprawling gothic mansion, but something about a tacky house with saloon doors and shag carpets being the chosen home of a demon really amused me. Logistically, it made sense that a rundown split-level would be what a recently divorced woman in the ’90s could reasonably afford. A split-level also offers this immediate pressure of choice, ascending or descending, but maybe that’s getting too pretentious.
PLAY NICE nods to the DNA of haunted house classics while subverting them. Were there particular haunted house stories or tropes you wanted to lean into, or dismantle, while writing this book?
For sure, the “crazy woman” trope. This book was also inspired by Britney Spears, watching what happened to her. And Brittany Murphy and Amy Winehouse, just to name a few. Why do women have to be “good” to deserve to be believed? Why do we have to be likable to deserve empathy? Then back to Amityville, I’ve always been fascinated with the layering of lore on top of real-life tragedy, the questions of what actually happened versus the stories we’re told or tell ourselves. I incorporated an Amityville-style book-within-the-book to explore that theme and to really go ham with some tropes.
Even at its darkest, PLAY NICE still has your signature wit. How do you navigate the line between humor and horror, especially when dealing with themes like loss, mental health, addiction and the supernatural?
Maybe I’m lucky, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a sense of humor. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use humor as a coping mechanism to some degree. It would feel inauthentic for me to strip humor out of a work just for the sake of trying to make it darker or scarier. For me, if I relate to the characters in a book, if they read like real people, then when they’re in danger, that freaks me out because that could be me! Or my friends or family! I’m invested; I feel it. I believe it. When I write, I’m not thinking about the line between humor and horror; I’m thinking about my characters, what feels true to them and to the world I’ve created and to the story I’m trying to tell.
What can readers expect next from you after PLAY NICE?
My next novel is called Kiss Slay Repeat, it’s a time loop horror story that takes place at a wedding. Fingers crossed it’ll be out fall 2026.
