Kennedy Ryan’s Skyland series is coming to a close. The best-selling romance novelist’s latest book, Can’t Get Enough, offers a bittersweet ending to a story of family, self-love, sisterhood, and “platonic soulmate friendship” among Black women. “This particular story felt very prescient for where we are, just in the world, and, specifically, in this country,” Ryan says.
Like the two books before Can’t Get Enough, this novel focuses on a single character’s story. This time, the plot follows Hendrix, a successful businesswoman and caregiver to an aging mother, as she tries to figure out where an unexpected relationship might fit into her full life. Ryan is known for subverting the genre’s conventions by incorporating social justice and women’s health themes into her love stories. Ryan describes her style as “the intersection of swoon and social commentary.” (The swoon comes, in part, from unskippable sex scenes that also manage to push the story forward.) “I see romance as a Trojan horse to smuggle in discourse,” Ryan says.
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The book tour for Can’t Get Enough commenced on Monday with a talk between Ryan and Les Alfred, host of the She’s So Lucky podcast, at Barnes & Noble in Union Square. An eager crowd of Black women of all ages flooded the fourth floor of the bookstore to line up for books before the event and share in one another’s excitement. “She writes in a way that is easy to understand and really speaks to the Black-woman experience,” said Jamie Parrish. Other audience members agreed. “I love a story that centers Black romance — not just romantic romance, but friendships and family,” Luquesha Collins said. “She tells unique stories but makes them relatable.”
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When Kennedy got onstage, the audience was uproarious. Ryan and Alfred spoke candidly about issues Black women face, citing parallels between real life and what the characters in her novels go through. The audience nodded in agreement throughout, occasionally calling out, “I know that’s right!” and “Let’s talk about it!” with a sprinkling of “oohs and aahs” when she threw in anecdotes about her husband who was also in attendance.
The author also touched on the question of the hour — the television adaptation of the first Skyland book, Before I Let Go, which is currently being developed by Peacock. “That’s the question that I get more than anything,” she said, but she couldn’t disclose much. “All of us are working together to reach a consensus about what this story is going to be and what the show is going to be. I’m hoping that I’ll have updates. Well, I have updates, but nothing that I can announce,” she said. “It’s just so encouraging to see how excited people are about it.”
Before the talk ended, Ryan had everyone in the audience stand for a group selfie, waving their books high in the air. Later, they’d pose with her one-on-one for more photos as they got their books signed, still just as excited as when they arrived.
