February is the season for love, especially for Sonora Reyes, the best-selling author of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School and The Luis Ortega Survival Club. After several successful YA novels, Reyes has now recently released their first adult romance. While The Broposal gets a little more sultry than the tomes Reyes is known for, it maintains much of what readers love about their writing.

"[The Broposal] is still pretty true to my voice as an author," they told the SGN.

Ironically, it's inspired by one of the most iconic heterosexual rom-coms ever. "I love romance," Reyes said, "and so sometimes I watch a... cult classic like The Proposal... [I thought], 'Oh, what about me? Like, what if it was Mexican, and what if it was Gay?'"

Much like the 2009 film, Reyes' latest novel follows the chaos of faking a green-card marriage but from a new perspective. "The green-card romances that are popular, they're all white people, and that's not the case for most immigrants who would have that struggle," they pointed out. "I felt like I should add one to the pot and make it something that people I know and [I] could relate to more."

What cements The Broposal as a classic rom-com is Reyes' commitment to the genre's classic clueless characters. "The characters are stupid, but in the most relatable way," they said.

The Broposal's leads, Kenny and Han, are flawed but relatable and charming. Their cluelessness about love, lack of communication skills, and ability to fall for manipulation only raise the stakes in the story. Despite their flaws, they remain the heart and soul of the novel without disappointing readers.

"With The Broposal, both of the main characters... have to grapple with their sexuality in different ways," they reflected. "Kenny... knows he's Bi, but he's only ever been with one girl. When they break up, he's confronted with this part of himself that he never really talked about before as much."

"I just felt like it made a lot of sense to dive into that, especially for Kenny, because I think it's something so real for a lot of Queer people, especially people who've either only been with one person before or... mostly... with one gender," Reyes added. "There's this feeling of being unable to prove it. I wanted to explore how it's a real experience. He's just as Bisexual as the next person.

"Then there's Han, who... did not even consider the fact that he was Gay until it hit him in the face."

The Broposal combines elements of humor and Queer joy with some much darker realities. For Han, it's the fear of deportation as an undocumented immigrant. But Reyes' writing is "supposed to be for the people who get it and understand what it's like, so they can feel catharsis in the happy ending," they said.