Book Two Ramble: Creating a Character with PCOS

I’m sure many of you have seen the PCOS representation listed as one of the tropes in Book Two all over social media and wondered why. I’m also sure some of you didn’t think much of it at all—and that’s okay too.

But for those who did wonder, I want you to know that everything I create, whether big or small, is done with intention.

So the reason I created Naomi Browne-Amoros with PCOS is simple: I have it too.

For a long time, I didn’t see women like me in romance stories. Growing up on romance novels and romantic subplots, I saw bodies that were uncomplicated. Fertility was assumed as part of the happily-ever-after. Health lived quietly in the background, because why create characters with medical conditions when love stories were supposed to be easy?

But real life doesn’t work that way.

And neither does my body.

Being a Black woman with PCOS has meant learning how to advocate for myself in medical spaces that don’t always listen. It meant dealing with symptoms that show up differently for everyone—weight changes, fatigue, pain, hormone shifts, hirsutism, PMDD and the constant uncertainty around fertility. It meant trying to explain something that doesn’t always have clear answers and being ignored at times.

I’ve tried medication to manage it. I’ve tried adjusting my lifestyle. I’ve tried doing everything “right.” And still, PCOS reminds me that control is sometimes an illusion. There are good days when my body feels like mine again, and there are days when it feels like something I have to negotiate with.

One of the hardest parts has been how invisible it can be. You don’t look sick. Neither do you look like you’re struggling. However inside? You’re carrying questions about your future, your body, and whether it will cooperate with the life you imagine for yourself. For Black women especially, those questions sit inside larger conversations about medical bias, pain not being taken seriously, and having to prove that something is wrong before help is offered.

So when I created Naomi, I gave her PCOS because I wanted to explore what it looks like when a woman lives with those fears quietly. I wanted to see how she would navigate love while carrying uncertainty about her body. How she would move through the world when doctors had already told her what might not be possible. How she would protect herself emotionally when her body already felt like it had betrayed her.

And just like me? Naomi doesn’t talk about it all the time. It’s not her entire personality either, however it shapes how she sees herself, how she loves, and how she imagines her future. It informs her fear, her humor, and her need for control. And writing her allowed me to give language to things I hadn’t always said out loud.

In giving Naomi some of my experiences, I wasn’t trying to make her story heavy. I was trying to make it honest. I wanted to show that women who aren’t uncomplicated still desire love, still deserve romance, and still get to be the center of a story that ends with tenderness instead of tragedy.

So… What I hope readers with PCOS feel when they meet Naomi is recognition. I hope they feel less alone. I hope they see a woman who is allowed to be ‘complicated’, loved, and chosen without having to be “fixed” first. I hope they feel permission to be soft about something that is often handled with toughness and silence.

And for readers who don’t live with PCOS, I hope Naomi creates understanding. That it opens space for empathy around bodies that don’t always behave the way we expect them to. That it reminds us how much invisible work people carry with them every day.

Creating Naomi was a way for me to write myself into a love story that includes all of me—not just the easy parts. PCOS, fear, desire, humor, and hope all exist in the same body. And I wanted to honor that truth on the page.

This story is for anyone who has ever felt betrayed by their body.
For anyone who has had to learn how to be patient with themselves.
For anyone who needed to see a woman like them loved loudly and safely.

Naomi’s story is fiction. But the feelings behind her are very real.

And if you live with PCOS, I hope this book feels like a small hand reaching back to say: you’re not alone in this.