(Pub date 10/6/2026)
6 out of 5 stars :)
I’ve not loved a book this much in a long time. There was something so special about this book, though, for the life of me, I’m not sure that I could precisely pinpoint what that thing is. The entire time I was reading Bad Words, my mind’s background program was running to come up with the language I would use to describe it. Several times, I found myself rereading passages in the book for the sheer sake of experiencing the words a second time. I was addicted to this book; I didn’t want to be distracted for even one second while reading, because I didn’t want to miss one beautifully penned word. However, I get that it will not be for everyone. It’s not exciting or suspenseful; it’s soft and insightful, even somewhat mundane. But it’s also visceral, delicate, and unrepentantly honest, full of astute observations, much like Selina Chan, the book’s “villain”.
Bad Words follows Parker Navarro, a novelist whose career was nearly destroyed by a scathing review from the formidable literary critic Selina Chan. Four years later, Selina is assigned to review Parker’s second novel, and history repeats itself. When their confrontation goes viral, the two become unwilling internet celebrities, publicly sparring while privately discovering that there may be far more to each other than either of them initially believed.
Underneath the sheer charm of the writing itself, I also found a reflection of our modern world, specifically the over-reliance of social media as a buffer against real human interaction. In this surreal space that is the interweb, we can be mean. We can say hurtful things. We can ridicule without repercussions because we don’t have to face the folks on the receiving end of our nastiness. We can judge and blame at will. But what happens when you meet the object of your criticism? What happens when they become real - a real human with real human emotions? Does that - should that - change how we behave? I feel like there were other over-arching metaphors for modern life embedded throughout the story, but the social-media-as-invisibility-cloak is the big one.
About two-thirds of the way through, the plot takes a turn. It was at this point that I started to truly panic at what the ending of this story would look like. I was so afraid of being completely heartbroken by a story and characters I had fallen so deeply in love with. I get that real life doesn’t always have happy endings so, then, neither should all stories. But I wanted one. I wanted it so badly for these Selina and Parker. I won’t give anything away about the ending; I will only say that I was not entirely grief-stricken by the last page.
Maybe that’s what I loved most about Bad Words: I can’t quite explain why it got under my skin so deeply. I just know that I cared about these characters, I cared about what happened to them, and I cared about every beautifully chosen word. It’s a quiet book that somehow left a very loud impression on me.
reviewed by April James
