Content Warning: This work contains discussions of death and illness involving children; the guide also briefly references suicide.

As books that target teenagers, young adult novels commonly use adolescent characters, straightforward narrative structure, and topics and themes that interest this age group. Young adult romance novels combine these elements with the genre-specific features of romance, including love interests, relationship-building, and endings that involve the emotional satisfaction of seeing the love story through to its “completion,” which commonly takes the form of marriage or sex. In contemporary times, the romance genre has always commanded a significant market share of literature, and young adult romance increased in popularity in the beginning of the 21st century.

As an example of young adult romance, A Thousand Boy Kisses features a unique ending in that the love interests are joined forever in the afterlife rather than through marriage or sex. This is a necessity of the novel’s plot, which places the work into the subgenre known as “sick lit.” This subgenre increased in popularity through author John Green’s 2012 The Fault in Our Stars, which focuses on the relationship between two teenagers with cancer, and the TV show 13 Reasons Why (the 2007 novel and the show’s first season center on a teenage girl’s death by suicide, but the show later incorporated a plotline involving a teenager with terminal AIDS).