Everything is not as it seems in 16-year-old Ilhy Gomez’s debut novel, Say Something Nice. Set during World War II, the story follows Walter Grover, a former detective with a tragic past, as he attempts to solve the shocking murder of his best friend, Ruth, at her very own dinner party. As guests suddenly turn into suspects, Walter has to start digging into the details of Ruth’s life in order to find her killer – unearthing troubling secrets while battling his own demons along the way. 

Featuring a lovable, quirky cast of characters, Say Something Nice tackles love and loss, forgiveness and deception as Ilhy examines what exactly it means to be labeled a good person. The Barrington Times recently sat down with the Barrington High School sophomore to talk about the book, independently published last December. 

BT: When did you find the time between any extracurriculars, schoolwork? You’re 16 so there’s a lot going on. 

IG: It’s a bit embarrassing, but mostly during class. Whenever I was supposed to be taking notes on the computer and actually be writing and I would always, like, text my friends and ask them to send me their copy of the notes so I could read it. I did most of my schoolwork at home instead of doing it in class like we were supposed to…I mostly find myself inspired when I’m in school, mostly by the things going on. Especially in my history class, ‘cus that’s when we were talking about World War II and such events and so that’s when I was like, ‘oh, this is perfect, I can add something about this in the book,’ so I’ll start writing. 

I told some of (my teachers) this year, after the book came out. I went up to a few of them and I was like, ‘listen, I have to confess to you that I spent most of your class writing this.’ And I acknowledged them at the end of the book. I had to, like, make sure to call them out a little bit and be like yeah, don’t worry, I promise I did my work. 

BT: You cover a lot of adult themes in your book – death, infidelity, a suicide attempt... 

IG: I’m a huge reader myself, so I noticed in a lot of the books that I read they don’t really deal into that sort of aspect in life, and I know that there are friends of mine that experience that or see those things happening with their parents. They might have gone through certain situations like with the suicidal thoughts and the attempts. I know friends who have tried to take their life, and I know that they know people who might have. I feel like it’s something that needs to be talked about more and that’s why I addressed it in my book. 

But all of those themes, I feel like everyone thinks of them as so completely scandalous, but it happens more often than we like to think about. And the reason I added it into this is because they’re kind of lovable characters and seeing them – especially the main character, seeing him go through certain aspects in his life – you think of him as a bad person, but in the end, is he really? Does this one action really turn him into such a bad person after everything that he’s been through?

BT: What was the hardest part about writing this book?

IG: I think it was definitely juggling my social life, my school work, as well as with this book. I had to not hang out with my friends…I had to cancel on a lot of hangouts with them because I was like, ‘oh I need to work on this thing.’ I definitely did lose a few friends during the way because they were frustrated I wasn’t spending as much time with them. But I thought it was a necessary thing because this is what I want to do for the rest of my life, I want to start doing this now. I feel like I have the ability to start working as a writer now so I’m going to do that. So if I need to lose people along the way, then that has to happen.

BT: How do you get through writers’ block?

IG: I talk to people. I kind of see how they’re doing and I’ll ask them about their lives and I’ll just ask them to talk to me. I don’t know why, but that’s always just kind of given me an inspirational boost. A lot of the characters have different aspects of people, whether it’s personality traits or physical traits. I’ll just think about people and try to describe them in my head. I’ll be in the store with my mom, she’ll be grocery shopping, and I’ll see someone and I’ll try to describe them in my head, and I’ll throw adjectives and that usually helps me out.

BT: What do you hope people get out of reading your book?

IG: I hope they realize it’s OK to be human, and it’s OK to make mistakes, because every single character messes up, in one way or another. Whether it’s in a huge, drastic way or it’s in a small way. Again, it starts out where Ruth seems like such a happy person, but by the end of it you realize she’s just human; there were good aspects to her, she was a great person, but on the other hand she did all those terrible things as well. The same goes for Walter, where he did great things but he was also doing bad things. It’s just how life goes; sometimes you mess up really badly or just bad enough, but it’s OK to do those things. 

In a lot of YA books, you have a lot of characters where they’re kind of perfect. There’s not enough books – at least that I’ve read – that focus on the human aspects of being human. And it kind of sets this ideal thought in your head like, ‘oh I have to be perfect.’ Same thing with social media; that’s what everyone’s talking about, how everyone puts their best foot forward when it comes to social media. That’s what my generation is seeing, where you have to be perfect all the time, and I want to remind them that’s not true. You don’t have to do that all the time, you don’t have to constantly be smiling or looking pretty for the camera. 

Say Something Nice is available now through Amazon.