Review:
Han (Alejandro) and Kenny have been best friends since they were kids. Kenny has known for some time that he's bi. Meanwhile, Han is straight. This hasn't stopped pretty much everyone around them from joking that they two of them are so close they're practically boyfriends, especially now that they share an apartment. It's never bothered either of them.
It has, however, bothered Kenny's on-again, off-again girlfriend, Jackie. Jackie's never been very comfortable with Kenny's interest in drag, either. When things come to a head in their relationship once again, Kenny, now single, has a brilliant idea: why don't he and Han, who is undocumented and stressed out by the constant threat of deportation, get married? They already know and like each other, and their families and friends have practically paired them up already, so it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to make it official. Han can get his citizenship, and they can eventually get a divorce.
Except that, in their efforts to playact being a real couple, they start to catch feelings for each other. Kenny's childhood crush on Han rears its head, and Han finds himself thinking about Kenny in ways that eventually have him wondering whether he is not, in fact, straight.
The author's note at the beginning of the book describes Kenny as a "sensitive people-pleaser" and Han as an "emotionally constipated himbo." Han had a tendency to keep most people besides Kenny at a distance - he had trust issues stemming from his mother being an addict. Meanwhile, Kenny's relationship with Jackie was immediately identifiable as unhealthy, although even Han wasn't aware of the depths of their issues (warning for on-page emotional and physical abuse on Jackie's part)
I really liked Han and Kenny together - they had some fun and sweet moments, and it wasn't hard to see why their friends and family so easily believed they were suddenly in love and getting married. Honestly, Jackie felt like a character invented entirely to explain why Han and Kenny hadn't explored their feelings for each other sooner. She was so supremely awful (and had apparently been pretty bad since high school) that it was a struggle to understand why Kenny put up with her. If any single thing ruins this book for someone, it's likely to be Jackie. I wish the author had set up a different obstacle between Han and Kenny, because Jackie became almost cartoonishly villainous by the end of the book.
Although the Jackie stuff got to be a bit much for me, and Han's injury late in the book almost pushed me over the edge (slightly too many things to worry about than I expected), I enjoyed this overall.
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