Be prepared to laugh a lot when you read Mia Sosa’s new rom-com, The Worst Best Man (Avon/HarperCollins), about a wedding planner who is left at the altar. It’s so funny you might not be able to read it in public without making snorting noises. According to Sosa, her friend, author Elizabeth Acevedo, was laughing so hard while reading the book on a recent flight, she was assisted by a flight attendant who thought she was in trouble.

The classic enemies-to-lovers trope requires the novel’s heroine, Lina, to make a choice when she has a career-changing business opportunity: Does she choose to work with her ex-fiance or his brother, Max (the person she believes responsible for breaking up her wedding)? She chooses the lesser of two evils, and a whole lot of fun ensues.

Craft is very much a part of any conversation you have with Sosa. She says, “Inherent in any romance novel has to be a conflict, and what keeps people . . . embedded in the premise, of course, is how the heck is this going to work out? But, if you have a good premise, somehow, in the end, it makes it easy to tell the story.” 

Courtesy of the author

Sosa’s background isn’t too shabby—she has two Ivy League degrees and is a former partner at a law firm. But when asked why this is only a footnote on her website, she says, “I don’t want people to focus on this because I am in a romance family. I feel like I am on par with my colleagues whether they are Ivy League educated or not, whether they have impressive careers or not. My experience is that the romance writing community is impressive in [its] own right. I have learned from other romance writers who have helped me improve my craft, and at the end of the day the stuff I’ve learned from the people writing damn good romances has made my writing sing—and writing briefs has nothing to do with it.”

Aside from concocting some of the funniest weddings and would-be weddings you never wanted to imagine, Sosa dishes up a lot of Brazilian culture and flavor, including some delicious food. I wish the book came with pão com manteiga and cafezinho. 

Sosa herself is half Puerto Rican and half Brazilian, and her earlier books have featured Latinx heroines. In The Worst Best Man, she focuses on her Brazilian heritage. She reflects the culture through the inherent value of family. “Relationships with family characters are a familiar theme in all my romances. Friends and family aren’t just part of the background. Incorporating them into the romance makes you see the way two people who have promised happily ever after will still interact with each other as part of a larger group. In Brazilian and Puerto Rican culture, family and tradition are a ‘thing,’ whether people screw up or not.”

Sosa continues, “I was raised by my mother and her two sisters in a large supportive family: women who were in marriages that didn’t work out and cousins raised by a network of single moms. This was the first time I put this in a book and I had deep concerns that to show a less traditional family with a single mom would be reflecting something that is arguably stereotypical. I wanted to show a part of my life on the page and mirror these women who did right by us and made sure all the cousins did well. This was a love letter to my mother and aunties”.

According to Sosa, in romance your character has to have a flaw. In Lina’s case, it is that as a woman of color she has to put on a mask and camouflage her feelings. As Lina says, “I now know the rules well: We must never let our emotions get the better of us; doing so is either a sign of weakness, one that diminishes our well-earned respect, or a mark of combativeness, which will cause people to say we’re irrational. And as women—women of color, more specifically—we simply can’t afford to be perceived in those terms.”

Sosa says, “Lina and a lot of women of color, in particular, come with a ready-made shield that needs to be resolved and acknowledged for a relationship to work. This heroine has lived a life the way I live life, recognizing you need to get beyond the shield. But it doesn’t come down at the end of the story. She learns how to navigate it and learns how to let somebody in.”

Not only is The Worst Best Man in first person, it also features two narrators. Sosa says, “It was a definite choice to feature both perspectives for me. It’s always important to have the heroine’s point of view, hear her voice observing the world around her and how people are responding to her.” Since we see Max’s point of view, we are made aware of his vulnerabilities and insecurities, not just his polished, attractive exterior. 

Sosa never wants the hero to resolve something for the heroine “especially since we are aware that Max has his own mask, and sees it, too,” which parallels Lina’s story. “Both Lina and Max are aware that this isn’t something they can resolve, and at the end of the book, they know they are stronger together.”

Readers can look forward to reading about Max’s best friend, Drew, in the sequel.

Kate Voorsanger Ryan is writer in Brooklyn.