We chat with author of Jilly Gagnon about Love You, Mean It, which is a playful romantic comedy featuring dueling delis, fake dating, a shockingly awesome ex, and just the right amount of amnesia.
Hi, Jilly! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello fellow nerds! I’m a writer living in Salem, MA with my family and my black cats, and you can regularly find me strolling through the cemetery (but not because I’m a grown-up goth-kid, more because it’s a really lovely arboretum where you can find excellent last names to pilfer). Until very recently my day job was as a writer and editor for a mobile gaming company, but these days I’m writing books full time. I’m usually highly caffeinated, mostly up-to-date on wide swathes of the Bravo-verse, and deeply sarcastic.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Really early—I was always a bookworm, and I started writing my own stories way back in elementary school. But they were GRIM. I’m not being a critic, I assure you. For some reason my intrepid orphans, while exploring their sprawling new home—nothing more glamorous than an orphan in an ancient manse, obvs—found a corpse with its mouth sewn shut? Just… easily accessible to any reasonably curious child? Clearly I didn’t know how to write my way out of this because that earliest-Jilly-story-I-have-found just kinda ended at that point. Really, where could you go from there?
Looking back, I really worry about the media I was consuming as a child.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Probably James and the Giant Peach
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Hobbit – I got VERY into the whole LoTR-verse as a kid
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: At Swim Two Birds
Your latest novel, Love You, Mean It, is out April 30th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Playful, witty, (medium) spicy, unexpected, salami. Interpret that last one however you like…
What can readers expect?
This book was my chance to really have FUN with the romcom genre. Like many romcom readers, I love a good trope, and when I was writing this I was gleefully throwing as many tropes into the mix as I could—amnesia, fake dating, the ex returning, enemies to lovers, the list goes on. This book brought me a ton of joy in the writing, and I think (hope?) it will do the same for readers!
Where did the inspiration for Love You, Mean It come from?
So I’m very… let’s say “practical” about naming my books during the drafting phase—I assign a name based on what I think is the single most important THING about that book, whether that’s a vibe, a setting, or a plot point. This book spent most of its life as “slytherin romcom” because the start of the idea was “what if two people who aren’t particularly romantic, and who tend to look out for number one a LITTLE too assiduously, got a romance story? What would that look like?” The details—Ellie’s family deli, Theo’s big-fish background in the small pond of Milborough, the grief each of them are struggling with—came much later, but the story nugget was always “love for a-little-bit-jerks.”
On a deeper level, it’s possible I’m a little-bit-a-jerk and this is my redemption story. We deserve love too!
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I think my favorite character to write was Ellie’s grandmother, Mimi—she fully leans into the elder privilege of giving zero effs about what anyone thinks of you, which makes her dialogue an absolute joy to write. For very different reasons I loved writing Theo’s dad, Ted—he’s such a monumental prick, which creates immediate friction in all of his scenes. It’s like having writing training wheels to write characters like that.
On a separate note, I think seeing a character’s family—what shaped them and what they fought to define themselves against—helps me as a writer (and hopefully helps my readers) understand why the main characters are the way they are. This is a very food-forward book, and in that spirit, I’d say the main characters’ families are like the deep, subtle flavor notes in a recipe that bump it up from simply “tasty” to something that’s also interesting and complex.
What’s next for you?
I have another romcom in the works that I’m really excited about! Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that it involves a love triangle… filtered through the romcom staple of quantum physics.
Lastly, are there any book releases that you’re looking forward to picking up this year?
I can’t wait for the final installment in the Witches of Thistle Grove series by Lana Harper, Rise and Divine—every book in that series has been such a delight, and I love how they’re progressively exploring darker, thornier themes. I also adore everything Kate Atkinson writes, and I happen to have written a book that could be categorized as a “country house murder,” so I’m really looking forward to Death at the Sign of the Rook.
