BAD WORDS

Swoony, clever, and endlessly charming, this rom-com is an indulgent yet artfully observed enemies-to-lovers for fans of Emily Henry, Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy, and Yulin Kuang's How to End a Love Story.

Parker Navarro's debut novel was the buzzy event of the season, when it sold for a million dollars to one of the most esteemed literary editors in the industry. It should've been the book of the year, but instead, it was panned so harshly by City Magazine critic Selina Chan that it became the literary flop of the decade and made Parker a publishing pariah. Four years later, his second novel is about to come out, and this time things will be different.
But, once again, Selina writes a review, and once again, it's devastating.
The night it goes online, Parker and Selina collide at an industry party and erupt into a blowout fight in a backroom that, unbeknownst to them, is secretly filmed. When the video hits the internet, it goes viral and, to their surprise, drives both Parker's preorders and City Magazines once dangerously dwindling subscription numbers.
As Parker and Selina are pitted against each other again and again through pointed interviews and in-person clashes at conventions, their jabs about writing, criticism, and who gets to lead an artist's life start to give way to the realization that they might be more like-minded than they thought. While the feud carries on online and in public, a different conversation is taking place in private, especially after they're thrust together for one snowy New York evening and begin an epistolary communication that starts to feel a lot like flirting.

Rioghnach Robinson has published five YA novels under the pen name Riley Redgate, which have received a number of honors from ALA, YALSA, Booklist, and Kirkus. She has also written for the Onion, and is the writer of the WEBTOON series Angel of Death. BAD WORDS is her first novel for adults.