"Because I want to go back. Even if it scares me. Maybe because it scares me." - Finding Home in Rachel Harrison's "Play Nice"
Might need seatbelts for this one...
When I was younger, reading acted as a bridge between me and a world I increasingly couldn’t understand. Much of my story is fairly pedestrian: the talk of escaping into worlds that brought me comfort. It wasn’t until school where I began to develop the various manners of critical reading, and in one of my first moments of “hold on, something’s weird here,” tested into AP Lit and then quickly ousted because I “couldn’t write the AP Lit-level essay. I was a formidable force in class discussions, but oh phooey, the kid just can’t write to our prestigious standards!
So they knocked me down to AP Comp, where I would “learn” to write the best AP essay ever! Can’t have those scores suffering because one student isn’t 100% up to snuff. This was not uncommon throughout my time in the education system. In second grade I was believed to have ADD because I couldn’t sit still or focus in class. I didn’t realize it then, but I was intensely bored. I loved when our teacher would read to us, introducing me to such classics as Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (no wonder I’m so messed up).
Instead of searching for ways to further engage me, however—as this was coming upon the late 90’s and early 00’s—it was decided I’d wear weighted vests and use weighted pencils, as a way of controlling…well, what was likely undiagnosed AuDHD, but again, the time period. It wasn’t until third grade, when we moved and had a district change, where things would shift at least slightly. My teacher at the time saw something in me, noticing in our typing classes that I had a fire for storytelling and writing. During our free periods, she would encourage me to go to the back of the class where we had one of those cool, domed Dell computers with colors on the back—this one was blue. She would send me back there to fiddle away at stories, which I then brought home to continue toiling at on our massive desktop computer.
So needless to say, schools always struggled with what to do with me, at least until I got to middle and high school and could take more classes that actually interested me. All of this is to say it was natural for me to continue an “upward trajectory” toward writing, as well as analyzing and synthesizing the things I read. Writing has always made sense to me, as it was an easier way for a somewhat non-verbal person like me to communicate. Being able to take my time and think through things has been a saving grace, as has the practice of comparative literature, helping me to dig even further into books I love, finding myself in the most unlikely places.
This was exactly my emotional state and thought process as I read Rachel Harrison’s upcoming novel, Play Nice. However, it wasn’t quite the unflinching themes of female mental illness-gaslighting, sisterly relationships, grief, or even motherhood and the ways we horrifically misbelieve and belittle them (more on that later). What I became emotionally tethered to was how perfectly Harrison captured the painful experience, inadvertently, of unmasking autism.
Wait, what? *logs off and goes to Goodreads to read the synopsis* Violet!! There’s nothing about autism in this book!! You would be right in that assertion. Also, ditch Goodreads if you know what’s good for you. This is a novel about our societal refusal to heed and, ultimately, support women and fem-presenting individuals. Yet, considering our countries long and detailed history of hatred/attempted exterminations of folks with disabilities of all stripes, it’s impossible for the characters in Harrison’s story to not connect to a wider web of experience amongst people struggling to have their disabilities heard and respected.
So buckle up, patrons—your friendly neighborhood librarian/bookseller is here to not only tell you about our author’s masterful descent into horrific experiences, but how she (not-so)accidentally produced a story critical of America’s long-standing eugenics-lite obsession with perfection and purity.
Round One: “I accept you, demon. / I will not cover your mouth.” — A Storm, Endlessly Perched at the Horizon
Possession stories are a challenge to “freshen up.” For every Late Night With the Devil or Talk to Me, there must also be an Exorcist: Believer or The Devil Inside. Sorry, those were the first few examples that sprung to mind. Jokes aside, possession horror is a subgenre with the unique challenge of approaching stories and ideas in ways that won’t feel redundant in an already formidable cannon. Many contemporary films and books explore possession through metaphor or image, providing space to explore the varied experiences, customs, fears, etc surrounding demons and their meanings/interpretations.
What firmly implanted demons into the mainstream, unsurprisingly, was the release of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel, The Exorcist, as well as its iconic film adaptation two years later. Much has been discussed surrounding the themes, theology, and gender within both, including S. Trimble’s essay, “A Demon-Girl’s Guide to Life,” which can be found in the fantastic It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections On Horror anthology. They highlight many of these themes, raising Blatty’s own faith and patriarchal man-of-the-cloth-savior influencing an entire generation of films/stories surrounding unruly and “bad” women and girls. Fast-forward to 1977, The Amityville Horror would posit itself as a work of non-fiction, telling the heartbreaking story of a family terrorized by their father only for their pain to be exploited throughout libraries and TV screens for decades to come.
It doesn’t feel like an exaggeration to say that both the UK, and its “rebellious” bastard the US, hate women. If the hundreds of years of colonial bullshit have taught us anything, it’s that male domination—especially white male dominance—has always been the point. It wasn’t until women began to join in on and espouse the lessons of our histories most diabolical medical nightmare, eugenics, where they truly began to assert themselves independently from their oppressors. Well, white women did this, most especially in the antebellum south where they were those in charge of much of the machinations of slave trading, as well as the treatment of said human bodies. The past several presidential elections of the US have proven many (emphasis white) women retain many of these tenants and lessons, as a large portion of Donald Trump’s voting block was white women.
All of this preamble is to help set up much of the themes within Play Nice. Our protagonist and narrator, Clio Barnes, is a New York socialite/influencer in her 20’s whose life turns upside down when her sister calls to inform of their estranged mother’s passing. You see, Clio and her sisters, Daphne and Leda, once lived in a home possessed by a demon…or was it simply horrific treatment from their alcoholic mother struggling with the divorce from their father? What surprises the family the most is learning their mother kept the house all this time, despite not living in it. But why? Entranced by the mystery, as well as her own scattered memories of that time, Clio asserts she’s going to renovate the house for sale, much to the dismay and protestations of her sisters and father. Does Clio really want to re-open these wounds of her trauma?
Naturally, as soon as Clio returns “home,” the line between reality and memory dissolves quickly. A copy of the book Alexandra wrote detailing her experience with the girls and the demon appears on the floor, ripped in half. The rest of the family swore to never read the book, as it would only continue to haunt them, especially Clio, deemed as the demon’s favorite when the horror took place. This copy is unique, however, as it appears her mother left marginalia for her, almost as a form of confession. What she finds within these worn pages are sides of the story Clio doesn’t entirely remember; ones that detail the very real pressure, stress, and control her mother was under, attempting to retain her daughters as their father used her mental health and experiences to showcase incompetence in court.
As anyone with even passive knowledge of the legal system knows divorce, is often much harder on cis women, fem-presenting or “deviant” (see queer) parents than it often is on cis men. There are obviously heartbreaking instances of loving and devoted fathers losing their children in divorce, but hell hath no fury quite like a cis man attempting to win a custody battle—quadruple that if you’re white and fairly well-off. Alexandra is a struggling mother who has lost most of her money and energy in the legal proceedings, now attempting to fend off a bored demon extremely interested in her little girl. According to her testimony in the book, Clio’s father capitalized on any moments detailing her supposed “incompetence.” This is decidedly showcased in one scene where the demon causes Clio to hurt herself, and in her mother’s attempts to understand what happened, winds up looking like the monster who harmed her, leading us to our next theme: believing and respecting women and disabled people when they’re suffering.
Round Two: “The world will drive a woman insane, then point at them and laugh.” - On Women, Disability, Mental Illness, and the Pain of Fighting for Oneself
Hey, chat, do we remember 2007, the year Britney Spears made headlines for shaving her head, plus the image of her “attacking” a car with an umbrella? How about that time Sinead O’Connor (may she rest in peace) tore up a picture of the then pope on Saturday Night Live’s cowardly stage, speaking up against the genocides and occupations of Ireland, only to be deemed crazy and unruly? Perhaps you recall Whitney Houston’s struggles with drugs and the erasure of her queerness, all while losing any credibility she built for the imperial machine?
These are simply a few of the most famous cases of exile that often stem from when women make mistakes, or god forbid, struggle against the absolute insanity of living under late-stage capitalism. More modern examples include the recent uproars and smearing of Melissa Barrera and Rachel Zegler. Both actresses seemingly blowing up—Barrera practically leading the Scream franchise out of hell, and Zegler donning the Snow White mantle for Disney’s latest cash-grab—only to become bombarded with vitriol once they dared speak out against the ONGOING genocide of Palestinians.
My point being: if you aren’t a heterosexual, god-fearing, red-blooded American man, you might as well prepare to be lionized in the public eye.
Now, these are merely celebrities I’m talking about. We don’t always see regular-degular citizens plastered across our screens for us to judge and belittle, but when they do…OH BOY, are we merciless. As much as we’d like to think we’ve evolved as a society, being far more inclusive of women, more accepting of nuance within their misdeeds, this is more often proven wrong immediately following supposed missteps. I mean, for goddess’s sake, Britney is referenced in Play Nice, within Alexandra’s footnotes. That 2007 reporting not only helped tank Britney’s career, but it wouldn’t be until 2023, with the release of The Woman In Me, that we would even hear the reality of her conservatorship and the disturbing treatment and power dynamics she was facing. You can’t make money off the truth though.
Harrison exposes much of this framing in Alexandra’s character, as the further readers get into her story, the more we learn the demon was merely another horror on top of others. Her character, and eventually Clio’s, are meant to comment on this demonization (maybe pun intended?) of the women in our society. It also details the myriad ways in which women are conditioned to stand against their gender, in competition or to simply separate themselves from everyone else—your manic pixie dream girls or the “cool girl” archetype. This can be seen in how Leda and Daphne report Alexandra’s behavior to their father, the ways in which the family jokes about and diminishes Alexandra’s struggle, as well as their father marrying a younger woman, putting her into that uncomfortable space men love where they can cheat and ultimately get what they want while she’s the “homewrecker.”
Children are typically conditioned to eventually seek their father’s approval/attention by turning on their mother, and this exists across gender spectrums. I am guilty of this, disparaging of my own mother as I sank into a hurt I wasn’t yet able to express or understand; the true complexities of my own situation nebulous to me until a couple years into my transition and heaps of self-reflection. The digger you deep into unlearning white supremacy and it’s asshole siblings capitalism and patriarchy, you find just how much we’re conditioned to hate or mock women in our society. It’s once Clio begins pushing back against some of her previous notions of events, familial dynamics, and even her influencer lifestyle that she begins to see how much of her mother’s teachings and struggles were likely real—including her father’s affair that thrust Alexandra’s life into hell, giving him everything he wanted.
It becomes evident Mr. Barnes feeds off of Clio relying on him for just about everything. Even the strained relationships between her and her sisters can be traced to him in how he used Daphne and Leda as little foot soldiers to undermine his ex-wife. There’s additionally a deliciously validating sequence where his mask slips and we see him for exactly who he is. I won’t detail that here because it’s fantastic and I want y’all to experience that for yourselves. BUT, regardless of his overarching intentions, the man has doled out a ton of harm, and Harrison deftly sets him up as Dad-Of-The-Year in the first half to drive home Alexandra’s mistreatment as we learn the full story. If it wasn’t obvious, I hate the guy. Given Amityville’s influence of this novel, it makes sense we have a father character who showcases the darkness underlying even the most loving souls. Instead of seeking amicable divorce and working to keep the girls in mom’s life, he turned them against her.
But it wasn’t until I saw Rachel at Doylestown’s Books & Brews event that something clicked. I hadn’t previously known that one of her favorite authors is Paul Tremblay (some friend I am), and it was her vocalizing this that made me realize another potential influence for this book that pairs perfectly with it: A Head Full of Ghosts.
(Rachel might throttle me for this.)
Round Three: “It’s terror and it’s relief. And it’s here. It’s here. It’s home.” - Recontextualizing Possession Narratives
Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts was my very first of his I read. The 2015 powerhouse follows the Barrett’s, a small Massachusetts family whose world turns upside down when one daughter, Marjorie, begins exhibiting disturbing behavior. Much of the story is told to us through the framing of her sister Merry’s recollections from this time, as well as blog posts from a writer dissecting the eventual reality series the Barrett’s would take part in to tell their possession story.
Part of what makes Ghosts such an effective horror is in how ambiguous events truly are. Is Marjorie merely acting out for attention? Is Merry telling the truth of events? As we later learn, the father had gotten the family into financial issues, with stress and anger making frequent appearances from the parents. Perhaps Marjorie saw her behavior as an opportunity to bring money into the house by starting a hoax? It’s never clear, and even in it’s absolutely shocking ending the facts don’t entirely add up.
The concurrent line of the blogger, Karen Brissette, functions as our criticism within the book’s universe. Utilizing previous horror theory and comparing The Possession reality series to many other horror films and conventions. She additionally brings criticism to how Marjorie is sexualized and dehumanized throughout the show, as well as the media company’s vested interest in the father’s suffering. Needless to say, the novel functions as its own metatextual love-letter/revitalization of a long running subgenre. Tremblay utilizes Brissette’s character as a the “voice of reason,” despite their credibility shifting throughout the story.
A Head Full of Ghosts ultimately utilizes its influences to tell a deeply emotional story about familial trauma, the objectification of “unruly” women, and how we struggle with memory in the face of trauma, and sometimes, protection.
Obviously Play Nice is a different book, but where Tremblay focuses more on television exploitation, Harrison focuses on familial censorship and our need to police the way women move through the world. Both achieve that lingering uncertainty in the back of your mind, asking if any of the events can be taken at face value. As Clio begins to peel back the layers of her life that were purposefully kept from her or obscured for her safety and compliance, we see her begin to let any artifice she had in her life burn away, which is ultimately gets her in trouble, having folks question her own well-being and sanity.
Needless to say, both books challenge a reader’s perception of how we view, understand, and believe the women in our lives when they try and tell us something is wrong. In Ghosts’s case, the mother and daughters are the ones consistently belittled and ignored for content, where Harrison further digs in to that feminine rage burning beneath any woman or fem-presenting person facing such behavior. In a way, I think these two novels are in perfect concert with one another.
But as we’re coming towards the end, it’s time to return to my thesis from the top. Because as Clio is going through this nightmare, she does challenge people in her life as she almost seems to shed some of her influencer persona, causing her family and friends to immediately question her integrity. It felt so damn familiar, and this is due to how the critical reclamation of one’s agency slots in perfectly with the experience of “unmasking” autism.
Round Four: “I can’t do anything but apologize. Play nice.” - The Societal and Political Nightmare of Unmasking Autism
I know COVID rocked a lot of people’s worlds. This was the first time people saw how easily, and poorly, the government fumbled a MASSIVE health crisis that—as no one likes to acknowledge—is still ongoing. Regardless, no one was prepared to spend a lot of time in their houses, cut off from the rest of the world. Before the pandemic I was juggling three different jobs to try and make ends meet, trying to find my way after finally graduating my undergrad in 2018. It was also right before this that I met my one lovely partner, Saher.
Saher had moved to the Lehigh Valley of PA to pursue their Masters degree, and we wound up meeting through a mutual friend and at a Christmas 2018 farmers market out of Lit Coffee Roastery. Both musicians and very flirty (I used to be super smooth), it made sense we eventually came together. Then lockdown happened.
Once we were able to meet with some people, I started going to Saher’s more and more often, eventually staying with them and their roommates for a few months in their North Bethlehem house they all rented together. It was during this time, with me returning to two of my jobs, where they began to pick up on a few things regarding how I was moving through my days. Finally they asked me if I had ever been diagnosed for ADHD or autism, being they are diagnosed. I hadn’t really considered it ever in my life, but it certainly made a lot of things I struggled with throughout the decade prior make a lot of sense.
Decades of running myself ragged, ignoring my symptoms, feeling as though there were immense things wrong with me and my struggles to adequately communicate myself interpersonally (plus tons more)…much like when I finally named my gender dysphoria, this boulder-like weight lifted from my shoulders, or at least for a time. The crushing reality was now clear, because not only would I then have to disentangle an entire life of destroying my body and bandwidth, but now, with clarity, I faced a world, and workforce, that is deeply rooted in ableism and eugenicist ideology.
As a quick reminder, eugenics is the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Conceived largely by Sir Francis Galton, this ideology was used as a means of perfecting what Adolf Hitler eventually came to call the “master race.” Europeans and Americans have long believed themselves to be the superior race above all others. It’s why the settler-colonial project of Zionism is currently working to eliminate an entire indigenous race in Palestine.
Power is an intoxicating thing, and when you have the tools and resources to subjugate and control an entire race of people, that sounds euphoric, doesn’t it??? Don’t actually answer that. For those who struggle with feeling out of control, you know exactly what that helplessness feels like. In the US, we aren’t necessarily privy to every facet of our lives being controlled because we were built upon this ideology. Eugenics was meant to coddle and nurture white supremacy so that “whiteness,” as it became known, would stand as the most superior and powerful race.
Ultimately, eugenics is responsible for our countries very real vitriol and hatred towards all non-white communities, folks experiencing disability, women, CHILDREN, and so much more. We’re currently witnessing RFK Jr. launch a full-frontal assault on public healthcare, but especially the autism community. Eugenics is responsible for organizations such as Autism Speaks, a company seemingly looking to help autistic children survive an allistic world, but is far more concerned with trying to cure autism. Autism is not something to be cured. Despite our demonization over decades of indoctrination, the autistic community is a vibrant, astounding testament to what our brains and bodies can do. Autism is not our countries problem. Imperialism is.
When I returned to work with a growing knowledge of my limitations and strengths, I confided in our then director with said accommodations, hoping for an understanding ear to help me as I came into my new role as the Adult Services/Programming Supervisor. She appeared to wish to me in feeling safe and as though my accommodations would be respected and implemented.
Boy, was I wrong.
Over the next year I would endure some of the worst gaslighting I’ve yet received in my life—and that’s including my 20-year stint with cisness! Jokes aside, no matter what I did, how I did it, I was consistently undermined, belittled, and exploited, despite having “accommodations.” It would culminate in a day where at the end of my rope, pushed to manic breakdown territory, I asked to be removed from that aspect of my job, which was then twisted into a full-resignation by management, and was then summarily kicked out. Because they used my words against me and then fired me, I could not collect unemployment, thus thrusting me into one of the hardest financial droughts of my life that I’m still trying to recover from.
Alongside this, I was losing people I believed to be my friends/support systems left and right. Because I was working to unmask my autism, I was now seen as “too much” and not worth the social niceties granted to the able. “Masking” in the autism community is a term used to describe the ways in which we attempt to mirror others in social situations, workplaces, and general everyday life. It’s a defense mechanism employed early on to avoid stigmatization and failure, constructing an identity based around success, exceptionalism, and, let’s say it together, ABLEISM. Part of my unmasking journey has been realizing and confronting not only how I betrayed myself and my own needs, but those of my friends as well.
White supremacy is a fickle mistress, promising comfort and safety at the expense of those who struggle more than we do. I’m disgusted by some of my beliefs and actions over the course of academia that alienated me from some of my best friends post-graduation. Without even realizing it, I was feeding into a machine designed to breed this kind of alienation and individualism. Even when I was organizing with folks on campus, I wasn’t realizing some of the ways in which I was harming those I truly loved.
Play Nice is not a book about autism, or even claiming to highlight autism, but much of what Clio experiences as she begins to tackle a demon and unspool pieces of her past reminded me so much of my experiences unmasking. I believe, in many ways, that even allistic people mask. Eugenics is a way of keeping white people strong, healthy, and superior, so to be a good American you also have to play by the rules of America—hence why so many communities we call marginalized are so. They don’t neatly fit into the tight confines of lonely, miserable whiteness, so therefore they are enemies to whiteness. Our treatment of folks with disabilities reflects this. Whether it’s in schools, the workforce, media, or even medicine—people are taught to hate, deride, mock, and abandon those who are not perfectly able. Thus, we see the everyday ways in which people create masks of themselves as a way of “fitting in.”
In Clio’s case, the more she pushes back against her established life, the more she loses those superficial friendships in the influencer space, as well as increasingly perceived as “unwell” by her loving family. As the demon continues to taunt and “play” with her, it finds consistent ways to shred her outward competence, even in terms of her online persona, at one point using her in her bodily and mental exhaustion to livestream her actions—much like messy drunk celebrities might go live on Instagram. As she reflects later in the novel, “That brief public exposure of my vulnerability–of my pain, my confusion, my fear, my grief–will forever overshadow everything I do.” Much like my own experience with unmasking, it doesn’t matter that I’m still me, but because I don’t fit within the easy strictures of allistic culture, my autism will forever overshadow those connections I made. It’s a painful and isolating feeling. Thankfully, I am fortunate and privileged enough to still have many who have stuck by me through these chaotic seasons in my life, treating me with the humanity and nuance we all rightly deserve.
Alexandra’s character, at least amongst her family, came into question because of her mental health struggles. It’s something violently ignored in women who break rules, yet nurtured and coddled in men. As we’ve seen in our decades-long bout of school shootings, the difference in coverage between a male shooter and, say, someone who the media wrongly designates as trans, is horrifically unbalanced by design. In divorce trials, it’s far easier to collect damning evidence on a female, fem-presenting, or queer parent than it seemingly may be for fathers and husbands. Anyone who tries to tell you there’s no bias in the legal system is someone who would additionally step on those less able than them to get to the top of the pile.
Some of my favorite quotes to these degrees are as follows:
“I think it’s just easier to call someone crazy than to confront the nuance of their circumstance, than to accept the callous cruelty that exists in the world we live in, the evil out there that revels in our suffering. // They say ignorance is bliss, and, yeah, maybe, but it’s still fucking ignorance.”
“My pain kept it occupied. Kept it happy. // I understand now, as the demon drags me into shadow. Mom couldn’t figure out how to beat it, how to exorcise it, so she tried to live with it. Give it everything it wanted. Everything it could possibly want. She played along. Played nice.”
“No, I’m not. And I’m not allowed to not be okay. I have to be okay. I have to be pretty and fun and together and nice to look at and good to be around. But I’m not any of those things anymore. Because I have this problem. Because I’m having some trouble. And no one believes me–they just think it is me.”
“It takes so much to build an image. It takes next to nothing to destroy one.”
And, one of my personal favorites for its brevity and depth:
“I am home. And I don’t feel it.”
Individualism teaches us to ignore the pain of others, but what would our daily existence be like if we didn’t? How many of our “deficits” in this country wouldn’t exist if we finally called bullshit on the past few centuries? What if, like Vesper in 2023’s Black Sheep, we simply chucked it all into the pit?
Round Five: “I still wanted it gone, but I didn’t know who I’d be without it.” - Healing, Empowerment, and The Relief of Putting Our Demons to Bed
This was the first time I put a lot of those stories into writing. The last few years have been filled with plenty of regret and shame, finally having time and space to sit with myself, tackling the eternal project of unmasking and transitioning in a world hell-bent on reducing me to my base parts. Despite this, however, there was plenty of healing, wonder, joy, and love as well. I may still struggle with spirals, feeling at odds with this part of me that makes life harder in many ways, but ultimately, who would I be without it? I’d like to think in a strange way, unmasking is me returning to my life before shame and self-hatred attempted shaping me into something I wasn’t.
I never thought I’d make it past 16, but here I am at 32, honoring myself more than I ever have. I am imperfect, and frequently still make mistakes. Decolonizing one’s mind is not a brisk process, but a long and ongoing one. That doesn’t scare me though, because I know I’m working with those I love and build community with to wrestle this country away from it’s genocidal, imperialistic discovery. We fucked up big, everyone, and it is up to us—ESPECIALLY white people—to break the cycle.
Here at the end, I hope this review resonated with you. Whether you’re neurodivergent, neurotypical, Britney Spears, or a freedom fighter looking for a sign to keep going. In my manic, maybe disjointed way, I hoped to draw connections between much of the powerful themes Rachel Harrison offers in Play Nice, while sharing more pieces of my life and why this book means so much to me.
Play Nice is a hilarious, brash, and terrifying story, with Clio as potentially Rachel’s most nuanced character yet, simultaneously holding immense self-reflection and a bratty attitude in equal measures. Clio is a response to many reviewers seeing her characters as “unlikeable” and “irredeemable,” so she decided to deliver a character almost daring you to hate her. She’s messy, a little bit of an asshole, and well aware of her ability to get what she wants, but she’s overwhelmingly human, and comes out the other side maybe even more human than she was before.
This is a story for the misfits, the weirdos, the maligned, the passionate, and functions exactly as horror should. Harrison places an Everest-sized mirror in front of readers, forcing us to consider our place on and within this burning zeppelin of a society. It becomes up to you, the reader, to decide which reality and future you hope for those you love and strive to protect. I can never thank Rachel enough for her kindness, friendship, and immortal patience and grace as I spammed her phone throughout my reading journey. This is a truly special novel amongst an already formidable repertoire, one capable of firmly cementing her amongst the growing cannon of contemporary horror. I cannot wait for this book to make it into the world. You’re going to adore it.
And of course, my endless thanks to Berkley Publishing for the chance to read this beauty early. I hope this did it justice. Play Nice will be released 09/09/25. I’ll see y’all soon.