This chapter focuses on the young adult (YA) literature market. Published largely in the 1980s as part of a long history of sentimental literature about illness for women, these books catered to teen girl readers by featuring love stories about teen girls and boys with life-threatening illnesses. The books issued emotional challenges to teen readers through yet more representations of teens as physically imperiled patients who needed to be overcome and rehabilitate. Surveying the work of the best-selling YA authors Lurlene McDaniel and Jean Ferris, this chapter analyzes the affective labor of sadness as a crucial growth-inducing emotion that tragic disability narratives are more likely to convey.