I don’t know. I had to sit with this one for a bit. Maybe because I think that if Harrison had taken more time, this book would have hit a sweet spot. I think though that how things resolved in the end was what had me not loving this book. I keep waiting for that gut punch moment like I got when I read Harrison’s Black Sheep or The Return. Though this book does a lot of what I call great reveals about the underbelly of families, I don’t think it dug in there enough.
Play Nice follows Clio, youngest of three sisters who is hit with the news her estranged mother known as Alex to her and her sisters has died. Clio and her two sisters, Leda and Daphne had a traumatic childhood due to their mother claiming the home they moved into after their parents divorce was haunted by a demon. Clio doesn’t remember much of that time as a child, but does know that Alex’s eventually wrote a book called “The Demon of Edgewood Drive”. That was enough for Alex to lose custody of the children to the three sisters father and his new wife. Clio’s sisters have no intention of going to Alex’s funeral, but Clio does and finds out that Alex left her and her sisters the house. DUN DUN DUN. Clio though is determined to flip the house and get to know more about the woman that everyone in her life told her was crazy. When she finds a book left to her, with notes from Alex within, Clio starts to wonder about her perfect family.
I have to say, I am fine with reading books about people I don’t like. But I really didn’t like Clio at all. I think that as one reviewer said, feminism in Harrison’s latest books seems to be selfish ass women who are terrible to all around them, but still loved. I don’t know. I just can’t rock with it at all. And you quickly see the cracks in Leda, Daphne, and their father. You have to wonder about Clio not seeing people because of things being kept from her and or her ignoring it, because she’s selfish.
I think most of the book though was us reading about Clio’s influencer life-style and her shallow life. And it doesn’t really get better. The meat of the book for me was getting to “read” Alex’s book of the haunting and her notes about things. It made it more immersive. I felt for her and also for what is slowly revealed to Clio and readers. For a dead character, she takes up a lot of room in a good way.
There’s a romance tossed in here that could have been cut honestly. It added nothing. Outside of Alex, the three sisters together is the book’s heart. I thought that it was true to sibling relationships.
And as I said above, the ending didn’t really work because it seemed that no one wanted to do the hard thing that they should have done. We get some lip service about how Clio has changed, but it didn’t seem that way to me.
