The female power fantasy in which a powerless woman conquers a powerful man, thereby symbolically winning his status within the patriarchy for herself, is a classic feature of adult romance. It is visible, too, in YA romances like Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Sitting in tension with this inheritance from adult romance is the fact that YA is generally expected to be pedagogical, teaching young readers how to live and love well. In blending pedagogy with power fantasy and its associated escapism, To All the Boys essentially upcycles the tropes of adult romance for young readers, “teaching” a complex combination of fantasy and realism. As it does, the text illuminates but does not resolve a gap between readers’ fantasies and genuine desires, serving as a case study of YA romance’s genre-blending development along the way.
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