There are certain things romance lovers expect from the genre. The most important, of course, is a happily-ever-after, but bestselling author Kennedy Ryan is focused on challenging who gets those happily-ever-afters.

“I’m always interrogating who deserves joy, and that means writing identities and experiences that are sometimes edged out of the traditional happily-ever-after,” Ryan tells Kirkus over Zoom. “I’m going to write about neurodivergent people. I’m going to write about people with chronic illness. I’m going to write about people who are plus size. I’m going to write about people who may not see themselves in a traditional happily-ever-after but still deserve one.”

In her latest novel, Can’t Get Enough (Forever, May 13), Ryan wraps up her megapopular Skyland trilogy with Hendrix Barry’s story. Hendrix is a vivacious and successful businesswoman who’s working on getting a client’s television show made, running a venture capital fund that focuses on Black female–led businesses, and navigating her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis—in other words, she’s not exactly sitting around waiting for a man. But then Maverick Bell shows up. He’s an unimaginably wealthy tech tycoon, although that’s not what draws Hendrix to him. He’s also kind, thoughtful, and relates to Hendrix’s experiences with her mother.

Ryan’s love of romance started early, although reading the books at home could be difficult. “My mom is a preacher, so she vehemently objected to me reading romance,” Ryan says. “I had to smuggle them into my house. I hid them in the mattress, under the bed, and in my closet. But it’s a common story that, when you go to college, you start reading ‘serious’ books and you put the romance down.”

Perhaps that’s why her initial career aspirations focused on a different type of writing—journalism. Ryan started writing for her city’s newspaper in her senior year of high school. “I had a lot of opinions, and for some reason they trusted a 17-year-old with an editorial,” Ryan says with a laugh. “I eventually got my degree in journalism and thought I was going to be reporting from war-torn countries.”

When her son received an autism diagnosis, Ryan found herself writing in the autism advocacy space. But, craving an outlet of her own, she returned to an old friend: romance novels. “I really wanted something for myself,” she says. “I started reading romance again in my 30s and remembered how much I’d always loved it. And eventually I had the thought: If I love reading it, and I’m a writer, what if I tried writing romance? I was 40 years old when I got my first book deal.”

Ryan’s happily-ever-afters are never without struggle and complexity. “The entire Skyland series interrogates some of the assumptions that we make in romance. You know you’re going to get a happily-ever-after because it’s a romance novel, but in the first book in the series [Before I Let Go], the love interests are divorced and they have to find their way back to each other. There’s so much healing and therapy. In the second book [This Could Be Us], the main character starts out married to someone else, and then for half the book she dates herself. There’s an emphasis on self-love in preparation for what’s next.”

Hendrix is proudly child-free, something that was important to Ryan. “From the beginning of the series, Hendrix has said that she doesn’t want kids,” she notes. “But I didn’t realize how relevant that decision would be when the book came out—this cultural conversation started popping off about women who are childless by choice with the whole ‘childless cat lady’ thing. It became even more important to me that I clearly state that this is an issue of bodily autonomy. You don’t get to tell me how I move this body of mine through the world. You don’t get to define me by my womb. You don’t get to define me by my reproductive choices.”

It’s a decision that struck a chord with her readers. “One of the most moving experiences from Can’t Get Enough’s release was so many women who are childless by choice telling me that they had rarely seen a heroine who is childless by choice and clearly articulates it,” Ryan says. “That sense of being seen is something that runs throughout my catalog. I wanted women who are ambitious and child-free and 40 years old to see themselves. Yes, you can have all of those things and you can still get a happily-ever-after and you still deserve joy. Hendrix is an auntie, she takes care of her mom, she takes care of her friends, she takes care of her community, and she’s putting so much love into the world. She’s one of the most certain and self-contained heroines I’ve written.”

One of Hendrix’s biggest challenges is coming to terms with her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Ryan explores the subject with sensitivity, realistic detail, and even a sense of humor, so it’s no surprise to learn that this is a personal topic for her. Her grandmother died from complications of dementia only a week after Ryan turned in the manuscript of Can’t Get Enough to her editor.

“It’s probably my journalism training, but interviews are a big part of my process,” Ryan says. In addition to drawing from her family’s experience, she talked to other caregivers in similar situations. “The heart of the book came from a lot of the interviews and hearing the heartbreak of this gradual loss and the ongoing grief. But there are also these flashes of humor where you have to laugh, because this stuff is hard.”

Ryan excels at blending the heartbreaking details of Hendrix’s life and the hilarious conversations she has with her girlfriends. “I think that the romance genre is the safest place for heavy discussions,” Ryan says, “because you’re guaranteed joy at the end. I can say, Yeah, this is going to be hard, but there’s going to be healing and there’s going to be a happily-ever-after. Life is never in a vacuum. On the same day that life is really, really difficult, it can also be very, very funny. And I can have a conversation with my friends while we’re laughing and then we’re crying because we’re vulnerable and we’re sharing layers of ourselves with each other.”

Much like Hendrix, Ryan has a full and busy career. Next up? There’s the Peacock adaptation of Before I Let Go, although she can’t share much: “We’re working hard behind the scenes, and I hope that we can share what we’ve been working on soon. It takes time, and it’s a fragile process. Until I actually see it on screen, like they say in romance novels, I’m notgoing to release the breath I didn’t know I was holding.”

And then there’s her next book, Score. The follow-up to 2021’s Reel, it’s part of her Hollywood Renaissance series, which she describes as “a love letter to Black creatives.” She says she’s been waiting for years to write this book, and it’s safe to assume that her legions of fans are ready to read, laugh, and cry right along with her.

Kerry Winfrey is the author of Waiting for Tom Hanks and other books.