Before I Let Go has been greenlit by Peacock! 2025 EBONY Power 100 Honoree Kennedy Ryan’s bestselling second-chance romance novel, which explores the complexities of the relationship between the divorced couple Yasmen and Josiah Wade, has been ordered as a series by the streaming platform.
View on Threads
Ryan, alongside Malcolm D. Lee, served as co-writers on the pilot and are the series’s creators. Sisters Attica Locke and Tembi Locke, film and TV veterans, will serve as writers, executive producers, and showrunners for the project. Lee, who has literary & publishing experience of his own, will also direct for the show while joining the executive producer board alongside Ryan, Dominique Telson (of Blackmaled), Mike Jackson and John Legend (of Get Lifted Film Co.), and Debra Martin Chase (of Martin Chase Productions).
Kennedy Ryan has made a name for herself in the literary world for not shying away from nuanced characters and plots containing uncomfortable topics; her works often engage audiences to reckon with the realities of infidelity, autism, mental health, Alzheimer’s, and miscarriage (as in Before I Let Go). The book takes readers on a journey through the Wades’ challenges as they try to put the pieces back together after Yasmin’s miscarriage after having two children together.
Before I Let Go is the first of the books in the Skyland series, followed by This Could Be Us and Can’t Get Enough. Ryan sat down with EBONY in May 2026 to discuss the way that she builds the world of Skyland, as well as other worlds (like her Hollywood Renaissance series). In that conversation, she expressed that she was “having the time of her life” while writing the pilot with Lee. That pilot being picked up means that readers can now become viewers who can have the time of their lives while watching.