Kennedy Ryan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance. She’s known for writing books that center emotionally layered love stories while also engaging with social issues, personal growth, and the complexities of modern relationships. Across multiple series and standalones, Ryan has built a catalog that ranges from sports romance to political romance, from Hollywood love stories to quiet, devastating second chances. What ties all her work together is voice: She writes characters with inner lives that feel real—flawed, yearning, ambitious, sometimes messy, always human.
Whether you’re new to Ryan's work or a seasoned fan, this guide will help you navigate her novels and pick your next listen with ease.
Note: This is Kennedy’s suggested listening order.
Hollywood Renaissance
The Hollywood Renaissance series is all about Hollywood ambition, creative chemistry, and romance that feels bigger than the screen.
Reel follows Canon, an acclaimed Hollywood director searching for the star of his new movie, and Neevah, an up-and-coming Broadway actress. Canon is in the audience for one of Neev’s performances when he sees her and immediately knows she must be his leading lady. From there, we follow the two as they navigate forbidden love and the start of a beautiful relationship, all while filming what could be both of their big breaks. The immense love Ryan builds between these two characters, paired with deeper themes, including chronic illness, make Reel an emotional roller coaster you won’t want to end.
The Close-Up is the crossover novella that collides two of Kennedy Ryan’s series, Hoops and Hollywood Renaissance. Takira (who we met in Reel) and Nazareth (August’s teammate in Long Shot) meet in high school while Naz plays basketball with her brother. The first night they meet they share an intense connection and are excited to see where it goes, but something unexpected gets in the way. Twelve years later, they are reunited and their attraction is still as strong as ever. The Close-Up is a short novella, but don’t let that fool you; this story packs plenty of romance—and spice.
This series continues with Score, the long-awaited follow-up to Reel, about the screenwriter and music director of the epic Harlem Renaissance biopic first introduced in book 1. Verity and Monk are former college lovers now working together on the film, and Ryan makes their second chance at love sizzle.
Skyland
The Skyland series is a love letter to friendship, reinvention, and the kind of stories that come from real history.
The trilogy begins with Before I Let Go, where we meet Yasmen and Josiah two years post-divorce, co-parenting and co-running a thriving business. We learn about their courtship, their hardships, and ultimately how they ended their marriage. As they come to terms with the past and check in with their emotions, it’s clear the spark between them is still there and getting harder to ignore, but is it too late for them? Before I Let Go is going to dig deep into your emotions—grab your tissues, you’ll need them.
This Could Be Us shifts focus to Soledad, a full-time parent with three teenage girls and a husband who’s just been caught by the new company accountant embezzling money. With no income and three kids to take care of, Soledad commits to focusing on herself while taking a stab at social media influencing to make ends meet. What she can't seem to avoid is the man who put her husband in prison: Judah Cross, a single father to two autistic teenage twin boys who can’t seem to look away from her either. This Could Be Us is about highlighting the fear that change brings while showing the compassion and growth that you find when you sit down and finally have infinite patience with yourself.
In Can’t Get Enough, we finally get Hendrix Barry's story. As everyone’s favorite rich auntie, Hendrix is dedicated to her friends, career, and community, all while caring for her mother with Alzheimer's. When tech mogul and billionaire Maverick Bell enters the picture, their connection is immediate and electric. Maverick's love for Hendrix is unflinching, the kind of love that helps Hendrix fill her own cup, enabling her to continue showing up for everyone else in her life. Ryan truly saved her best for last in this steamy and captivating story.
All The King’s Men
The Kingmaker starts with a spark that’s so strong it feels like it shouldn’t be possible. When Lennix and Maxim first meet at a protest, they feel an immediate connection over their ambition and desire for a better world. She’s trying to save her Native American ancestors’ land, and she doesn’t know that he’s the son of the corporation’s CEO trying to destroy that land. They never expect to see each other again, but years later, they reunite in a chance encounter in Amsterdam with one week left before they move to opposite sides of the Earth, and decide to use that week to its fullest. The story ends on a cliffhanger that makes you want to queue up the next in the series immediately.
The Rebel King picks up right where The Kingmaker left. Lennix has been kidnapped while completing a charity project abroad. Maxim organizes a rescue and they return to Washington, DC. Happy and in love, the couple are figuring out how to fit their lives together while still dealing with external dramas. When tragedy strikes his family, Maxim is left running for president with Lennix deciding to run the campaign. Her only strict rule is no sleeping with the candidate. To avoid scandal, they must keep their hands off each other for a year, but they find it’s more difficult than they expected. Can they truly have it all? The Rebel King is a wonderful conclusion to an already epic duet.
Kimba (who we met in The Kingmaker) and Ezra are childhood friends who share an unbreakable bond. As they grow up, their friendship moves to something more, but outside forces break them apart. When they finally meet again, Kimba is a powerful political campaigner who just helped elect the president. Ezra is a single father who runs a school in Atlanta. The bond between them is just as strong as ever, right when the two of them are at pivotal moments in their lives. As they come together, they face the issues that separated them years earlier. In Queen Move, Kennedy Ryan delivers complex and realistic characters who make this interconnected standalone an unputdownable listen.
Hoops
The series begins with Long Shot, where we meet Iris and NBA star August West and watch a connection spark that feels immediate and unforgettable. But here’s the catch: Iris is in a relationship with August’s lifelong rival, forcing the two to go their separate ways. But over the years, in their darkest moments, both think back on that night, on that fork in the road: the what ifs, the could-have-beens, the (im)possibilities of second chances. Long Shot goes deep, exploring what it means to survive, reclaim your life, and hold on to hope when everything feels stacked against you. It’s intense, emotional, and one of those romances that stays with you long after the end.
In Block Shot, Jared Foster and Banner Morales were friends in college on the verge of becoming something more until a misunderstanding caused everything to fall apart. Ten years later, Banner and Jared are both sports agents working at rival firms in the same city. They butt heads and compete to get the best new players signed, all while fighting their feelings for one other. But it's only a matter of time until their desires take over, and once they cross that line, there's no going back. Block Shot is a romance story, but it's also an examination of feminism, equality in the workplace, compassion, and staying true to who you are.
The series ends with Hook Shot, a delicious slow burn that brings all the heat. The story follows Kenan Ross and Lotus DuPree. Kenan has just finalized his divorce and he's ready to leave the drama behind him once and for all. He hopes to spend his summer in NYC with his daughter and prepping for next season. But he's thrown for a loop when he finds himself working side by side with Lotus DuPree, the one woman who refuses to give him the time of day. Lotus is on a sex hiatus while she tries to figure out her feelings and deal with her inner demons from the past. But her no-sex policy becomes harder to enforce the longer she's around Kenan. Both have so much to lose, but the gains may just be worth the risk. Hook Shot is about two people learning how to trust, soften, and choose love without losing themselves in the process.
Grip
Grip doesn't let anything define him. Bristol is the black sheep of her family. Raised in a world of music with no musical talent of her own, she's felt left out of everything and abandoned by her twin brother. But when Bristol meets Grip, he gives her something that no one else has: connection. He feels it too. In just a few short days, both of their lives have changed and there's no turning back. Flow is a prequel novella that unravels the many layers of Grip and Bristol’s story.
In Grip, we reunite with Grip and Bristol as their connection deepens into something messy, passionate, and impossible to deny. Grip is a rapper on the rise, and Bristol his manager, which means their lives are completely entangled as his career takes off. The tension between them is unreal because the feelings never really went away, they just got buried under ambition, timing, and everything they think they’re supposed to prioritize. The longer they try to fight what’s happening between them, the more inevitable it becomes. Grip is all about desire, devotion, and what happens when the one person who understands you best is also the one person who can ruin you.
Still follows Grip and Bris post-Grip’s euphoric ending and takes us on a journey a few years into their future, where they are now a power couple blessed with fame, success, and a beautiful love. As the world looks on, they use that as a platform to address prejudice and indifference. Yet what defines them through this story is the paralyzing setbacks that will test their love, purpose, and faith. Still is the conclusion to an against-all-odds love that ends as poetically as it started.
Soul
The series begins with My Soul to Keep, where we meet Kai Pearson, a young woman chasing her dreams in Los Angeles while carrying the weight of grief and trying to figure out who she is outside of loss. That’s when she meets Rhyson (Rhys), a famous musician with a pull that’s impossible to ignore. Their connection is intense, but their romance is anything but simple, because loving someone with that kind of fame comes with noise and pressure from every direction. Just as Kai and Rhys finally find a path to happily ever after, we’re thrown for a loop when secrets, lies, and deception are added to the mix, ending in a cliffhanger like only Kennedy can write. My Soul to Keep is a story about ambition, healing, and falling in love when your heart is still learning how to survive.
In Down To My Soul, we pick up right where My Soul to Keep ends. Kai is finally having her break, a little different from her original plan, but she’s craving each performance. Meanwhile, her past is coming back to threaten her budding career and put yet another hurdle in her complicated relationship with Rhyson. Each one seeks refuge in their respective work while obsessing, questioning, hurting, fighting the connection that neither of them can let go of. Down to My Soul is about trust, devotion, and the fight to hold on to your person when the world doesn’t make it easy.
Refrain is the conclusion to Kai and Rhys’s story, delivering the emotional payoff listeners have been waiting for. After everything they’ve been through, their love must grow into something solid and unshakable, the kind you choose on purpose, again. This is where Kai fully steps into her power and the story finally gives us the closure we’ve been craving. Refrain is romantic, intense, and the kind of ending that feels like both a release and a celebration.
Bennett's
The series begins with When You Are Mine, where we meet Kerris Moreton, a woman trying to keep her life steady and controlled, even when her heart refuses to cooperate. Kerris is engaged, focused, and doing her best to choose what’s safe, but then Walsh Bennett enters the picture and everything she’s been pretending not to feel starts rising to the surface. Their connection is magnetic and dangerous, the kind that makes you question whether doing the “right” thing is worth it if it costs you the love you want. When You Are Mine is angsty, romantic, and full of tension that builds until it snaps.
In Loving You Always, Kerris and Walsh’s love story intensifies as the consequences of their choices catch up to them. We pick up where we left off in When You Are Mine, with Kerris pregnant and trying to make her relationship work with Cam. As they both struggle to put the past behind them and move forward, Walsh struggles to stay away from everything that he lost. He throws himself into business and continuing to repair the relationship with his father. Although Kerris appears to finally be getting everything that she ever dreamed of, the man of her dreams isn't hers, and her relationship with Cam continues to fall apart. When tragedy strikes, Kerris, Cam, and Walsh are all forced to face the feelings that they have tried to avoid.
Be Mine Forever is the last book in the Bennett's Series, and shifts focus to Jo Walsh and Cameron Mitchell and years of feelings that never fully disappeared. Jo Walsh has loved Cameron Mitchell for most of her life. After his marriage fell apart and he suffered a horrible loss, Cameron left town to find himself again, and that meant cutting ties with those he was closest to. He has turned his life around, and when he returns home he knows that he will have to confront Jo. As Jo stops settling for uncertainty, Cam must decide whether he’s willing to stop running and finally claim the future he’s always wanted. Be Mine Forever is emotional, romantic, and deeply satisfying.
Until I’m Yours is an interconnected standalone that drops us right into Sofie and Trevor’s story. Sofie, a famous model since she was 18 years old, is asked by her father to help him reel in a big fish for business. Sofie never expects to come face to face with the hottest guy she has ever laid eyes on. But Trevor Bishop is more than just a pretty face. Soon, Sofie realizes that Trevor is the one reeling her in, and there is nothing she can do to stop it. But when Sofie's past threatens to ruin everything that Trevor has ever worked for, she will do whatever it takes to do the right thing for him. As with most Kennedy Ryan stories, Until I’m Yours deals with sensitive topics with the delicacy they deserve, while giving you an incredibly passionate love story at the same time.
Anthologies and short stories
In her first Audible Original novella, Coming Home, Kennedy Ryan takes us to the campus of fictional HBCU Finley College, where Niomi and Touré are reunited 20 years after they shared a fateful kiss. Old feelings flood back upon their reunion, and homecoming weekend sets the stage for their second chance at love. Coupled with the superlative narration of Wesleigh Siobhan and Jakobi Diem and a special performance from the legendary Southern University marching band, Coming Home is a story you will fall in love with.
You’ve Got a Place Here, Too, Ebony LaDelle’s anthology of love stories set at HBCUs, provided the perfect opportunity for Ryan to return to Finley College. In “Brave the Skies,” Ryan follows Celine, Niomi and Touré‘s daughter from Coming Home, in her senior year at her parents' alma mater. When Celine confesses her crush to her professor, he does the right thing and turns her down—he's engaged, and she's his student. Five years later, everything has changed: He's single, she's thriving in her career, and the chemistry they denied finally gets its chance in this tender slow-burn romance that'll leave you craving more.
Filthy is an audio-only anthology where listeners are delighted with "love letters" from our favorite book boyfriends. The contents of the letter? Our deepest fantasies... Performed by listener favorites, some of the letters are sweet, some emotional, but most, they're just plain filthy.
Adaptations
Before I Let Go is in development as a television series at Peacock, produced by UCP and Universal Television. Malcolm D. Lee is directing and executive producing the adaptation.
