What makes a romance a romance? Romance Writers of America’s most current definition of the genre is “a central love story with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” This “emotionally satisfying ending” law is so inviolable that you can probably find a romance reader who will swear they saw Moses come down off a mountain with it inscribed on a stone tablet. 

 In romance-speak, there are two flavors of endings: the HEA (Happily Ever After) and the HFN (Happy For Now). For example, at the end of a YA romance, the main characters can be “happy for now,” but most readers won’t necessarily think that they will be together forever and ever. Meanwhile, HEA used to mean marriage and babies, but now most readers just want to feel confident that the characters are happy and able to meet any future obstacles as a team. 

By the way, this should help you understand why romance readers will throw down and fight when they see Nicholas Sparks shelved in the romance section. If one of your main characters ends up dead—and I mean dead dead, not “living as a vampire with their vampire true love” dead—it’s not a romance.

Readers are most likely to push up against these boundaries in uncomfortable or challenging ways in series where the main characters take several books to achieve their HEA. The question is about how the non-terminating books end. Sometimes, they end with straight-up cliffhangers: characters might be in some kind of danger, or they’re broken up with no hope of future reconcilement. Pro-cliffhanger readers say it’s enough to know that future books are coming, but I’m petty and won’t read them because I think they violate the “satisfying and optimistic ending” rule. 

The other option is to have each book end with an HFN, but that’s a difficult balancing act: how to have the characters safe and secure without the romance being settled and keep readers on the hook? No one walks this line better than Ilona Andrews, a husband-=and-wife writing team. 

Andrews has several long-running series, but most dedicated romance fans are wild for the Hidden Legacy books, which are full of houses where magical talents run through families. In the first trilogy in the series, Nevada Baylor falls in love with one of the most powerful magic-users in the world, telekinetic Mad Rogan. Sapphire Flames is the first book in the second trilogy, and the main character is Nevada’s younger sister, Catalina.

Knowing how dangerous it is to go against a romance reader when an HEA is on the line, I asked Andrews in a Skype call how they juggle romantic tension and reader expectations when writing a trilogy. 

Andrews said, “It’s like one giant book broken into three pieces. It’s one of the reasons why our book appeals so much to romance readers—it starts with the couple far apart; there are certain things that prevent them from being together.”  But having three books allows Andrews to “explore what happens when they have to deal with living together, who makes decisions, how is it going to work? A lot of romance does not cover the continuation, but the continuation is interesting.” 

Another winning part of Andrews’s formula is the extensive development of secondary characters rather than a tight focus on the romantic partnership. The series is full of strong women who know how to wield their power. Baylor sisters Catalina, Nevada, and Arabella are all prime magic users; their mother has magically-enhanced sniper prowess; and their grandmother builds kick-ass tanks. Andrews explains, “In real life, you have to balance the relationship and the family, and occasionally you have to choose: is it your spouse or your family? When you’re in a relationship, everyone around you has all sorts of opinions.”

Andrews respects their readers too much to end on a cliffhanger, saying “We would never do a cliffhanger where everything is terrible. The problem with the cliffhanger is readers might have to wait for a year, and that’s not fair!” Taking care of readers is important to them. “We want readers to be swept away, stress out, be upset at all the character’s tribulations, but at the end we want you to be happy, we want you to be uplifted. What we are selling is the emotional experience. That’s what our brand is built on.” 

Andrews remembers hearing a writer say that the last line of the book is what sells the next one. As readers, we tackle books in a continuing series with more than a little dread. In fact, my best friend sent me a picture of Sapphire Flames with a bookmark near the end, “Jennifer!” the text message said, “These two aren’t getting together, are they?” 

HFN. It’s a real leap of faith.

Kirkus romance correspondent Jennifer Prokop cohosts the romance podcast Fated Mates. Follow her on Twitter @JenReadsRomance.