Bad Words is a smart, contemporary enemies-to-lovers story set inside the publishing industry—and as someone who spends a whole lot of time thinking about books and writing reviews, I found the premise especially interesting.
Selina Chan is a respected literary critic who wrote a scathing review of author Parker Navarro’s debut novel. Four years later, Parker is back with his sophomore effort…and Selina pans him again. When their animosity spills into public view, their feud goes viral. Suddenly, readers are following every exchange between Parker and Selina, and all that attention turns out to be surprisingly good publicity for both of them.
And, of course, somewhere between publicly despising one another and privately getting to know one another, things become a little more complicated.
I really enjoyed what Robinson had to say about criticism, creativity, and the publishing industry. How much power should a critic have over the success or failure of someone’s work? How do you separate “this book is bad” from “this book simply isn’t for me”? And how much of our own taste and experience inevitably finds its way into the reviews we write? As a reader and reviewer, I found all of that fascinating.
There’s also quite a bit here about ambition, career expectations, and the pressure to live up to what our parents—or even our younger selves—thought our lives would look like.
The biggest strength, though, is Selina and Parker themselves. Both are exceptionally well-drawn characters, particularly for a debut novel. Their careers matter to them, their conflict feels legitimate, and I believed the emotional evolution of their relationship. I also appreciated that neither character had to become an entirely different person for the romance to work.
I did have a few reservations. At 400 pages, this felt about 50 pages too long to me, and some of the ideas and conflicts became repetitive. I also would have loved more development from the supporting characters. And then there is my old nemesis: the third-act breakup. I simply do not enjoy this trope, and this book did not magically convert me.
Still, there is a lot to admire here. The characters are memorable, the publishing-world setting is terrific, and Robinson has some genuinely interesting things to say about what it means to create something, put it into the world, and then allow other people to judge it.
I listened to the audiobook, performed by Katharine Chin, Major Curda, and Ríoghnach Robinson, and thought it worked especially well in audio. The performances were engaging and easy to distinguish, and despite the length, this was an extremely easy story to follow while listening.
Bad Words is already receiving a lot of enthusiastic early reviews, and I can understand why. While it wasn’t quite a five-star read for me, this is an impressively assured debut, and I will absolutely read whatever Ríoghnach Robinson writes next.
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Thank you to Macmillan Audio for gifting me an advance listening copy. Bad Words will be published October 6, 2026, by St. Martin’s Press.
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