Play Nice by Rachel Harrison: Summary and Study Guide

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Quick Facts

Short Summary

Clio, a fashion influencer, learns of her estranged mother Alexandra's sudden death and returns to her childhood home on Edgewood Drive, which she and her sisters inherit. While clearing the house, she discovers her mother's annotated memoir, Demon of Edgewood Drive, which claims the house is haunted by a demon. As Clio renovates and stays in the house, she experiences increasingly disturbing supernatural events—messages in her sketchpad, moving objects, and a presence in the attic—while her family dismisses her as unstable, echoing how they treated her mother. Clio's investigation uncovers family secrets, including her father's affair and a childhood burn she cannot explain. After a failed exorcism and a violent confrontation with her sisters, Clio confronts the demon in the attic, offers it her snake charm, and cries genuine tears, which causes it to retreat. She decides to stop engaging with the demon and sells the house, finding a measure of peace and reconciliation with her family.

Full Summary

The novel opens with Clio at a party in New York, flirting with a man named Ethan. She mentions she grew up in a possessed house, and they leave together. Her phone rings repeatedly; she finally answers and learns from her sister Daphne that their mother, Alexandra, has died of a heart attack. Clio abruptly sends Ethan away and heads to her father's house in New Jersey.

At the family home, Clio reunites with her sisters Leda and Daphne. They are cold and distant, and they refuse to attend their mother's funeral, which Aunt Helen has arranged. Clio insists on going alone. She retreats to her childhood bedroom, where she notices a small burn scar on her forearm that she has never been able to explain. She also remembers her mother's memoir, Demon of Edgewood Drive, which she promised her father she would never read.

At the funeral, held in a Victorian house in Connecticut, Clio meets Mariella, a psychic medium, and Roy, her mother's former boyfriend. Roy gives her a satin pouch containing a ring, a coin, sage, holy water, and a key to the Edgewood house. Clio learns that her mother kept the house, believing it was possessed, and that it now belongs to Clio and her sisters.

Clio decides to take charge of the house, despite Leda's objections. She visits Edgewood and finds it preserved as it was in her childhood. In her old bedroom, she discovers an annotated copy of her mother's book, inscribed to her. She begins reading it, and the narrative alternates between Clio's present-day experiences and excerpts from Alexandra's memoir.

As Clio renovates the house, she experiences strange phenomena: a ceiling fan spins on its own, she hears whispers, and she finds the word