#pineville

$350,000/4 br/4000 sq ft

Pineville, LA

[Image description: cover of the book The Mall by Megan McCafferty, showing a neon outline of a woman in sunglasses]

3 out of 5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Megan McCafferty is one of my favorite authors, so I had high hopes for this book. I didn't know anything going into it, just that it takes place in the 90s. And I feel bad saying this, but it read to me like it needs one more draft before publication, kinda.

If you've read the Jessica Darling books, The Mall takes place in the same universe and same town. There are a few connections sprinkled throughout like Easter eggs, and that was kinda fun. But there was something about this book that grated on me, even though the main character feels very similar to Jessica Darling. (Maybe it's just timing/my age--I last read the Jessica Darling books in college. Maybe I'd hate her now.)

The book follows recent Pineville High grad Cassie Worthy during the summer before she leaves for Barnard in NYC. She's just come off of a 6-week bout of mono and finds out she's been fired from her food court job at the mall before she could even start (probably because of the mono, is that legal?), and oh yeah, her only-other-intelligent-and-driven-person-at-their-school boyfriend of 2 years has been cheating on her while she's been sick. Cassie bounces back when she gets a job at a fashion boutique with her ex-best friend Drea, who turns her on to a literal treasure hunt at the mall.

There were weird things about this book that I couldn't get past, so I have to mention them: it's never addressed, but Cassie calls both of parents by their first names, and it's extremely strange. Just one line about that quirk would have helped, because not addressing it was weird. Similarly, Cassie and her new love interest don't know each other's names for almost the entire book, and that's only addressed in her head like once or twice. They call each other "Sam Goody" and "Bellarosa," the names of the stores they work in. Is it supposed to be cute? It felt weird because it went on for the whole freaking book.

Also, the narration felt weird to me. It's first person past tense, but phrases like "back in the summer of 91" or references to "years afterward" the current events of the book made me think that maybe there'd be an epilogue from the future at the end or something. (Spoiler alert, there wasn't.) I guess movie and TV voiceovers do this a lot, but it threw me off seeing it in a book. Maybe I just don't read enough books that do this, I don't know.

Anyway, the treasure hunt "clues" were a letdown, I actually started to feel claustrophobic that the book only takes place in the mall or in cars, and there were parts of the book that didn't feel fully fleshed out, like the middle. And did I mention that Drea's the best and Cassie's the worst? I'd read a Drea spinoff in a heartbeat.