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.

Parker Navarro is preparing for the release of his second novel with more than a little trepidation. Years earlier, his debut sold for more than a million dollars after a frenzied bidding war, the early buzz setting him up for literary stardom and bestseller status. But three months before its release, Parker's book was eviscerated by critic Selina Chan in a review that pronounced it "ten thousand fine sentences that heroically join forces to say nothing" in what Parker deems "its kindest paragraph." Selina's review spread rapidly, unleashing a brutal wave of online schadenfreude and ridicule, effectively tanking Parker's book and career. Now, after years of self-doubt and humiliation, Parker is hoping for redemption with a new novel, sold for a fraction of his first advance to a publisher willing to rebuild his literary reputation.

Selina, too, is walking a professional tightrope. She writes for City Magazine, which is financially unstable and suffering from declining readership. In an effort to reignite interest in the controversy surrounding Parker, her editor assigns the new novel to Selina for review. In a worst-case scenario for Parker, Selina once again pans the book, calling it "another novel in search of an idea from an author who mistakes bombast for wit."

Soon after the review is published, Parker spies Selina at a publishing party and follows her into a secluded area where he confronts her and the two get into a fiery argument about criticism, art, and each other's responsibility to integrity and honesty in their writing. But Parker and Selina are not alone. Someone secretly records their hostile exchange on a cell phone and hours later, posts the video on social media where it instantly goes viral. Both Parker and Selina are thrust, unwittingly, into an online spotlight where they are expected to fuel the conflict by attacking each other. In keeping with the axiom that there's no bad publicity, the literary feud explodes interest in Parker's book and drives traffic to Selina's magazine.

For a while, Parker and Selina play along publicly. Parker publishes a short, satirical story in the Paris Review about a critic dying bitter and alone, and Selina responds with a letter to the editor stating, "Imagine my surprise to find Parker Navarro writing a story with a real purpose." In private, however, Parker and Selina begin texting each other. Their communication in this format, while still sniping and sarcastic, is more open and revealing as they discover a common passion for literature and share their experiences of being trapped in the expectations of others and fears of losing their authenticity. Gradually, fascination and attraction bloom in the subtext of their communication.

Through Parker's and Selina's alternating points of view, Robinson deftly explores themes of duality throughout the novel. There is the relationship between artist and critic, for example, with Parker believing that negative criticism is a form of destruction and Selina believing that the goal of a critic is to engage honestly with art without restrictions. "You think it's shallow to care about being successful?" Parker asks Selina early on. She responds, "Yes. Shockingly, I'd hope that authors would care more about literature than moneymaking."

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. Robinson maintains a generous, open focus throughout the novel, refusing to collapse any point of view or argument into right or wrong.

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. Romance first sparks between Parker and Selina when they discover a mutual love for an obscure book. "Sometimes a book forms such a foundational part of you that to meet somebody else who loves it, who really cares about it, feels like stumbling on a stranger in another country who comes from your hometown," Selina says. Bad Words is destined to become one of those books. --Debra Ginsberg

Ríoghnach Robinson (photo: Mikhail Lipyanskiy)

Ríoghnach Robinson is the author of six YA novels published under the pen name Riley Redgate, including Alone Out Here. Her books have been published on four continents, optioned for film and TV, and named to best-of-the-year lists by ALA, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Public Library. She is also the writer of the WEBTOON Originals series Angel of Death and has written for the Onion. Bad Words (St. Martin's Press, October 6, 2026) is her adult debut.

What spurred your transition from young adult to adult fiction? How has your experience differed this time from a publishing perspective?

My transition from young adult to adult was not something that I actively thought about. I wrote most of the draft of my first YA novel when I was a senior in high school, so I came to publishing relatively young and I felt like I had things to say about teenage life at the time. I've published six young adult titles in the decade since then and now, more of the questions I want to explore and the characters who come to me are adult. I do still sometimes get ideas for YA books and I'm not leaving it behind, but my focus has naturally shifted over time. In terms of it being a different publishing experience, I think that because young adult is an age category rather than a specific genre, there is a little bit less pressure to categorize it very narrowly. We've talked a lot about positioning for Bad Words in a way that I've never experienced with any of my young adult books.

There have been many books about books and publishing, not to mention novels about novelists. But there are very few novels about book critics. In your acknowledgments, you thank Tim Brayton, a film critic, for teaching you "why criticism matters." Can you elaborate on that--and why you chose to focus on literary criticism in the novel?

I started reading Tim Brayton's film criticism in high school. Tim is a film formalist, and his tastes are specific, and he speaks in such a fearless way. For somebody who feels as though they lean toward chameleonic or people-pleasing behavior, such as Parker, for instance, seeing somebody who fearlessly states something with the full force of their convictions is an inspiring thing. To this day, I have those feelings reading Tim's criticism, because the depth of his film knowledge is astounding. The detail in which he's able to analyze film language is just wonderful to read. For me, the level of engagement in criticism is sort of an act of love because it pays such close attention to what somebody has created. Selina would never dash off three lines online and dismiss a work and just call it a day because she reads the work so closely. What I find beautiful about criticism is the willingness to engage deeply with another person's art, even if you wind up hating it. I think the work that critics do is completely invaluable.

There are so many layers of Asian American experience in the novel; everything from Selina's feeling of disconnection from her traditional Chinese parents and Parker's close relationship with his boisterous Filipino family, to Parker's representation of Asians in his book and reactions of other characters to that. How important was it for you to capture all of these different perspectives?

One thing that feels universal in my experience of conversations around being Asian American is this feeling that you're being placed into a box and that there's so much more to you than what people are seeing. There is something limiting about being forced to focus on identity as if that is the most interesting thing about you. But the experience of being an American child of immigrants, like Selina, is very different than coming from a family who've been American for a while, like Parker. I think the sense of ownership in the diaspora is different. One thing I like doing with my Asian characters is to make their Asian identity part of the landscape but not the point of the book. There's a part where Selina admits that she doesn't like talking about or being public about what's going on with her family, because that feels reductive to her. When we meet both Selina and Parker at the start of this novel, they've both worked through most of their feelings about what it is to be a diasporic person. And this is not the focus of the book because it's not the focus for the characters. It's not the story that they're living through right now.

You have done a brilliant job capturing the rhythms of social media posts, as well as texting, emailing, and other electronic communications. Did this epistolary format come easily for you? Why was it important to make social media such a prominent part of this book?

I think what makes social media appealing to write about is that it has this intricate system of social rules. There are different rules than in offline reality, because people would not say the same sorts of things in real life that they do online. You're allowed to be more vicious, to go for the throat, as long as you are able to take a position of moral righteousness. If you can show yourself to have some kind of cause that's worth championing, you basically have carte blanche to say anything, which is wild. But you do have to pick the people whom you're okay with offending. When Parker and Selina are railing against each other, neither of them realistically believes that they're going to get 100% of people to be on their side, but they both accept, to some degree, that there are people who are going to disagree with them, and are going to hate them. You do want to believe that you can change hearts and minds, otherwise, why would you spend time arguing online? But with Bad Words, I wanted to explore just how difficult it is to change one person's mind.

Is it fair to say that, at its core, Bad Words is a celebration of the power of books to open worlds and even, as you say, to change one person's mind?

Yes, it is a love letter to the written word, which is a bit odd, because the first thing that the book does is to show the many ways in which the written word can devastate people, destroy relationships, and prevent relationships from ever forming. I think we see that online especially where there are so many ways in which a single bad faith interpretation of a single sentence can send a conversation spiraling and prevent you from ever knowing somebody. The book spends a while in that space but, ultimately, because it is a love story, the pleasure of it for me is peeling back that layer and getting to dive into the ways in which words can also connect us and be a profound form of love. I do think that reading someone's book is the best and closest way we have to know a whole person and to enter the heart and soul of another human being. --Debra Ginsberg