The Romantic Genre

The novel exists within the genre of young adult romance fiction and as such, it employs references to romantic films in order to place Lara Jean and her story within a historical timeline of romance through the ages. From a birthday party staged to recreate the scene from Sixteen Candles to a prom proposal taken from Sleepless in Seattle, Lara Jean’s story is full of allusions to romantic comedies. Rather than existing on its own, the novel deliberately invokes scenes, music, and tropes from romantic films. This puts the novel in conversation with other works in the genre, and suggests that the love that Lara Jean and Peter share is a love equal to the greatest love stories of American culture.

Lara Jean loves romantic films and she is the novel’s narrator—all of the reader’s information about her world is...