Every generation has a favourite romance writer. Depending on when you came of age, it might be Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, Julia Quinn of Bridgerton or Diana Gabaldon of Outlander. But for a newer generation of readers, Emily Henry is hands-down the biggest romance writer in town.

Henry is an internationally bestselling author who's been credited with cracking the modern romance novel, especially for Gen Z and millennials who are tired of swiping left and right, and want to see that struggle reflected in their love stories.

She's sold more than 2.5 million copies of her print books alone, and three of her books (including her breakout hit Beach Read) are being adapted into movies. So what is it that makes Henry's books so beloved, relatable and successful? One explanation is that she's unafraid to show the unsexy sides of love.

"The thing that draws me to love isn't the sexiness of it — it's the magic of it," Henry tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "The thing that's most interesting to me about love is sort of the messy humanness of it."

Henry's latest novel, Funny Story, is about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common. When the main character falls in love with her ex-fiancé's new fiancée's ex, things definitely get messy.

"When you are falling in love, it's fun," Henry says. "But it's also terrifying, and sometimes traumatizing and even triggering. I think you find out so much about yourself when you are in a new relationship. You reevaluate your attachment style [and] every issue that you've ever had bubbles to the surface when you are falling in love.

"So it just worked out to be like, 'Oh, this is kind of a formula.' Not in the way that people talk about romances being formulaic, which I think is sort of ridiculous, but I think a formula as far as I can use love stories specifically to show people transforming, to show people growing, to push a character through an emotional arc."

For Henry, it's important to call herself a romance writer because she's tired of people looking down on the genre and dismissing its value.

"There is still a lot of snobbery around the genre and I find it really bizarre because it's one of the very few genres that is so centered on women," she says. "Obviously, it's not just for or about women, but the authorship is dominated by women, the readership is dominated by women and I just don't think it's really a coincidence that it's the genre that gets dismissed so readily…. Romance is so significant because it values women's stories."