This week’s Shelf Awareness Maximum Shelf pick is Ríoghnach Robinson’s BAD WORDS, a magnetic, undeniably clever debut perfect for fans of Sally Rooney and Emily Henry that captures the tender ache of two people caught between criticism and connection.
Parker Navarro’s buzzy debut novel should’ve been the book of the year. Instead, it was panned so harshly by notorious critic Selina Chan that it became the literary flop of the decade. Four years later, his new novel marks a second chance.
Selina’s carefully curated life is a result of the sacrifices she’s made in her pursuit for excellence. The last thing she wants to do is review Parker’s second book, but as the only Asian-American staffer at City Magazine, and with the iconic publication in financial trouble, she has no choice.
The review goes live: a devastating pan, again. That night, at an industry party, Parker and Selina erupt in a fight that’s secretly filmed—and it goes viral, driving Parker’s preorders and City’s subscription numbers.
As Parker and Selina are pitted against each other through pointed interviews and in-person clashes, their jabs about publishing, criticism, and who gets to lead an artist’s life give way to the realization that they might be more like-minded than they thought. While the feud carries on in public, a different conversation begins in private, especially after they’re thrust together one snowy New York evening and begin an epistolary exchange that starts to feel a lot like flirting.
Witty and endlessly charming, Ríoghnach Robinson’s BAD WORDS is about the power of writing and the unexpected intimacy of being truly, wholeheartedly, read.
“YA novelist Ríoghnach Robinson’s witty and deeply felt adult debut, BAD WORDS, illuminates the power of the written word to both connect and divide. It blends social commentary and literary romance to explore art and identity through the complicated relationship between a novelist and an influential book critic…
With keen understanding of social media culture, Robinson also contrasts the differences between online and offline personalities as representative of truncated short-form versions of a person and a more nuanced and complicated long-form version. There is even duality in the families of Parker and Selina. Parker is a third-generation Filipino with a rambunctious, emotive family, and Selina is the first-generation child of Chinese parents who would have preferred she’d chosen a more acceptable career and with whom she communicates by email…
Above all, however, this smart, funny gem of a novel is a valentine to books and the words within them. Robinson’s spot-on descriptions of the publishing industry are catnip for bibliophiles, and the enemies-to-lovers storyline feels fresh and completely genuine. But it is Robinson’s deep love of the written word as the path to understanding and connecting with others that shines through every page.“—Shelf Awareness
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