Kennedy Ryan’s New Novel Can’t Get Enough Is Meant to Start Discourse (Exclusive)

Kennedy Ryan’s Can’t Get Enough, is finally out now and readers are salivating to get their hands on it.

The novel is the final installment in the bestselling author’s popular Skyland trilogy, about a group of friends who live in the fictional Atlanta neighborhood of the same name. Can’t Get Enough centers entrepreneur Hendrix Barry and her growing infatuation with tech worker Maverick Bell, and has already been praised by some of romance’s buzziest writers, like Talia Hibbert and Abby Jimenez.

Ryan herself has also been feeling the buzz building around the release, as she told PEOPLE at the Spicy Nights with Spotify Audiobooks in February.

“It feels like pressure to deliver on what is a lot of readers’ favorite character in the series,” the author previously said of her protagonist. But there’s also a sense of excitement as she wraps up her beloved trilogy.

“I think this entire series interrogates happily ever afters,” Ryan says. “It’s our perception, our ideas of what a happily ever after is.”

Uplifting women’s stories has always been a priority of Ryan’s. It’s present in Hendrix’s journey in Can’t Get Enough, but also the rest of the Skyland series, which follows Hendrix’s friends Yasmen (Before I Let Go) and Soledad (This Could Be Us). But the author is also interested in subverting societal expectations in her fiction. 

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“A lot of times in romance novels, readers [are like], ‘Give me a wedding, give me a baby,’” she says. “That’s not what this series does all the time, but it still is looking for ways to express how a lot of modern women will find joy in the context of a relationship with a partner.”

Ryan also notes the urgency of writing a variety of women’s stories. Hendrix, for one, is childless by choice, which offers readers alternatives for what happiness can look like.

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“It’s so important, especially now, [when] we are living in a climate where it feels like there’s a lot of forces and elements trying to strip us of our agency and of our autonomy,” Ryan says. “I want to write women who are establishing themselves in the world, who are chasing their dreams, who are building community with other women and who are not settling.”

Can’t Get Enough also sees Hendrix dealing with hardship. Hendrix’s mother deals with an early form of dementia in the book, and Ryan found it powerful to speak with people whose loved ones had similar experiences — and allowing them to “see themselves in a romance novel.” A former journalist, Ryan found the research, specifically learning more about Alzheimer’s disease, to be incredibly rewarding.

“Even when hard things are happening, you are still finding love, you’re still pursuing love,” Ryan says. “These tough things can be happening in your life, and if you find the right partner, they can come alongside you and really support you.”

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That’s true as things heat up between Hendrix and Maverick. Ryan teases that Can’t Get Enough still includes all of the steam and spice her books are known for (the author even has her own Spotify playlist of her favorite audiobooks too). But her final Skyland book is also a snapshot of our current moment.

“This is a book that reflects the times,” Ryan says. “I’ve been very intentional about the discourse that I hope we will have. Even as we’re swooning, even as we’re kissing, there’s some real things that we can interrogate as we’re reading.”

Can’t Get Enough is now available, wherever books are sold.