Genre-savvy Protagonists in Queer YA Rom-coms

Focuses on Emery Lee’s 2021 YA novel, Meet Cute Diary and Alice Oseman’s 2020 YA novel Loveless:

Georgia’s story [in Loveless], like Noah’s [in Meet Cute Diary], ends up deconstructing the rom-com formula, but ultimately putting it back together. The climax of Loveless has Georgia completing grand gestures to prove her platonic love to her friends, in the exact manner that she would if they were her romantic love interests. Georgia even gets her wish of receiving an emotional, poetic, climactic love confession… but this confession comes from her new friend, using the tools of the romance to convey how much Georgia means to her on a platonic level. These scenes are given the same weight they would be in a romance format, albeit with its component parts switched out and rearranged to prioritise friendship and found family.