Play nice

Tenuous memories and unresolved trauma haunt horror phenom Harrison's (So Thirsty) new page-turner. Influencer Clio Barnes is out on the town when she receives news that her estranged mother has suffered a fatal heart attack. The youngest of three daughters, Clio has few of her own memories of her mother, Alex, who lost custody of her children long ago; most of what she knows about her mother's abusiveness and alcohol addiction was supplied by Clio's sisters and father. The sisters inherit Alex's house, which their mother always purported to be haunted, even detailing her supernatural encounters in a book her children have never read. Clio moves in to the house to get it ready to sell and is confronted with the means to get to know her late mother and her demons. She is soon pulled into a psychological maelstrom. Through witty prose, raw emotion, and bone-chilling sequences, Harrison balances the terrifying and the tender as Clio questions her memories, her mother's claims, and the source of her family's suffering. VERDICT With shades of The Amityville Horror and Kiersten White's Mister Magic, this refreshing haunted-house novel has chills, thrills, and twists that will linger with readers long after it's over.--Emily Vinci