Seventeen-year-old junior class vice president Grace Bak has her entire future all mapped out with plans to become a doctor like her parents. But the weight of Grace’s own daunting expectations lead to debilitating panic attacks that have made her a virtual outcast at school even to her longtime friend and crush. To make matters worse, her grandmother and only real support system has just died. Halmoni was the glue that kept Grace’s little family together, especially after she and her dad lost her mother to cancer when Grace was too little to have many memories of her. To cope with the grief of another loss, Grace starts a webcomic inspired by the Korean myths her halmeoni used to tell her as a child. In the webcomic, Sun God, Grace spins the tale of Korean god Haemosu and his love Yuhwa, but with a twist —the two gods are trapped in the bodies of teenagers and worst of all cursed to attend high school. Grace never expected her comic to go viral, but it has, and more astonishingly, the fandom has also somehow conjured the real Haemosu and now it’s up to Grace to get him back home. Except when she starts to fall for Hae, sending him home is the last thing she wants to do. More troubling, Hae isn’t the only god to suddenly reappear. Hae’s sworn enemy has also been brought to the mortal realm and is set on destroying Hae all while infecting humanity with a deadly disease. As an epic battle between gods loom, Hae is without his powers, so it may fall to Grace to fight back against a vengeful god hellbent on punishing anyone who gets in his way.

The word "bitch" conjures many images for many people but is most often meant to describe an unpleasant woman. Even before its usage to mean a female canine, bitch didn’t refer to gender at all—it originated as a gender-neutral word meaning genitalia. A perfectly innocuous word devolving into a female insult is the case for tons more terms, including hussy, which simply meant “housewife,” or slut, which meant “untidy” and was also used to describe men. These words are just a few among history’s many English slurs hurled at women.  Amanda Montell, feminist linguist and staff features editor at online beauty and health magazine Byrdie.com, deconstructs language—from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation patterns—to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women form gaining equality. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women use the word “like” as a filler? Or why certain gender neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or even how linguists have historically discussed women’s speech patterns? Wordslut is no stuffy academic study; Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but both downright hilarious and profound.