A summer-long treasure hunt with Cabbage Patch Dolls for clues in a 90's shopping mall? Yes, please. This book was a treat to read and filled with quirky characters and 90's nostalgia. So much fun! Cassandra's "perfect plan" boyfriend dumps her on the way to work at America's Best Cookie. Rather than watch her ex work with his new squeeze, Cassie finds a new job -- in a shop filled with clothes she would never wear. Her former BFF Drea is already employed at the shop and they find new common ground to bring back their friendship. Speaking of Drea, did anyone else hear Janice from "Friends" laughing when Drea's signature style was described? This book was smooth and satisfying. Hope you all find it to be worth your time this summer.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

If you're looking for a fun, fast-paced hit of nostalgia, look no further. The Mall is a look at teen life highs and lows through the epicenter of teenage culture - the mall.

Cassie Worthy is fresh off a not-so-great bout of mono and is excited to start the summer before college off by working together with her boyfriend of two years at the local mall. But plans shift unexpectedly and Cassie finds herself working alongside a former best friend and crushing on the music store's rebel cashier. With laugh-out-loud humor and a Cabbage Patch-led treasure hunt, Megan McCafferty's The Mall is a story you won't want to put down.

I received a copy of the book from the publisher in exchange fro an honest review

So The Mall was a book that I was looking for right now that was right under my nose. I had requested this a while back and was excited to read it. Then when my good friend Bex sent me her July TBR and it was on there I picked it to read. I am honestly so happy I ended up picking it up because I probably would have slept on it for a little while longer.

The Plot:
I loved the plot of this book. I mean right away I was sold when I saw these took place in the 90s. I also was excited to read a story that mainly takes place in a mall. I have plenty of memories of when I was younger going to the mall and shopping with my friends. There really aren't many malls near me so I never worked at one but this story really made me wish I did. I felt such nostalgia reading about the store Sam Goody. I kinda remember passing those when I was younger. Honestly, I just miss music stores in general. There were a couple other stores mentioned but I don't think they were actual stores but probably generic stores every mall had. I loved seeing her interact with the people at the stores. All of them had different personalities that matched the store they were working out which I ended up really enjoying. It was fun seeing the main character, Cassie, interact with this people. It just gave off such a fun summer time vibe. Which for a while I had been looking to read since it is summer and I haven't really done much cause of quarantine.

The Characters:
So honestly the only thing that really stopped me from giving this book a 5 out of 5 rating which I originally wanted to do when I first started reading was the main character. Yes I did enjoy her overall as a main character. I loved seeing her growth as the story progressed. She made a lot of choices that made me happy and felt different from other YA books. However there were a couple of moments she wasn't very supportive of her friend, Drea. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to spoil the story and things that happen but basically I just felt like it was a really shitty thing to do. So I didn't really agree with that and that turned me off to her character for a little bit. I did really enjoy her friend Drea. She was the type of friend Cassie needed to help her get out of her shell. She wasn't afraid to be herself. She also was very out there for sleeping around a lot and honestly didn't care what people thought of her. You could tell in the past she wasn't that good of a friend to Cassie but you can tell she grew as well. Overall their friendship is what really made the story for me. Sure it ended up having some bumps in the road but all friendships do.

The Writing:
I had no problems with the writing in the story. I personally enjoyed the writing because as I said before I flew through this book. I feel if I ended up reading it alone I probably would have finished it a lot quicker. I did go ahead at times but I really just wanted to find out what was going to happen. I really would love to check out more from Megan. She did a great job bringing me back to the 90s.

Overall:
I thought this was such a fun book. I highly recommend picking this up if the story has any interest to you. I found it to be such a quick read. The chapters just end up flying by. I feel it's perfect right now for the summer. It takes you back in time which I really enjoyed. I had a lot of nostalgic moments when reading this book. I will definetly be checking out more from Megan.

This is a super fun lighthearted blast-from-the-past read.
Cassie is 17, a recent High School Graduate (no thanks to mono) who though she had her whole life together when she starts a super cool mall job the Summer before college.
Everything that goes wrong just points her in the direction of a real life "Goonies" style treasure hunt in the mall with th most 90's themed clues and locations.
It is filled with fun, messages of belonging and being true to yourself.
VERDICT: Super fun read for any reluctant readers or 90's babies ho miss the old days!

It's the summer of 1991 and Cassie is planning to spend the summer before college working at the mall with her boyfriend. But before the first day even begins, she find herself jobless and boyfriendless. Her plan B job, though, might just turn out to be infinitely more exciting.

This book was absurd and I loved it. It's set entirely within the mall and involves everything from a secret bar for employees in the basement to a decades-old treasure hunt with Cabbage Patch Kids as clues. Cassie is smart and clueless, easy to root for and easy to get frustrated with - and the same is true for most of her fellow mall denizens.

This book is classic McCafferty, deeply sarcastic, viscerally embarrassing, and full of feelings the characters don't know how to deal with. It's also set in Pineville, NJ, the setting of her Jessica Darling books, so many supporting characeters' surnames will be familiar to her fans. (None other than a young Bethany Darling makes an appearance within the first few chapters!)

This is the ideal book to devour in one lazy summer sitting, which is precisely what I did.

This is 100% 90's nostalgia and I am living for it!

This book was amazing, I loved everything. The plot, the characters, and the throw backs.

This book was a good mix of serious, hilarious, and just plain relatable. I highly recommend!

The premise of this book alone is what drew me in. As a 90’s baby I just had to get my hands on this book. It was so refreshing to read about characters that were a bit older for ya since typical books are about people in their wary teens.

It was a fun read, took me back to my childhood. Had higher hopes for it than what I got out of it though. The storyline itself was just meh. Not necessarily bad, but nothing that will stick in my mind for long either.

I wanted to love this book so much but sadly I didn’t. I would say if you are a die hard fan of the 90s definitely check it out but if not I feel like you might miss a lot of the references.
I did enjoy the treasure hunt aspect in the mall in this but overall it just fell flat for me sadly.

I read this in one sitting, which in most cases for me is a giant feat and means the story was just that good (and I had the time). That's not true in this case. In fact, I found myself skimming more and more as I read further because I just wanted it to be done. The only reason this wasn't a DNF was because I'm trying to get better at reading my Netgalley books before they publish and I knew I had time with this one. I was also really looking forward to it because it's set in 1991 in New Jersey (where I grew up and currently live), and at a mall.While I enjoyed the nostalgia aspects, but it read VERY YA. The MC was incredibly immature, and not in a cute way. Not sure what else I can say about this one, other than I was sorely disappointed.

3.5/3.75 stars.

I really enjoyed the nostalgia this book gives.....I wish things were as easy as life seemed for 1990's me. Give me all the music, scrunchies, cabbage patch kids, mall fashion shows and 90210 (They just don't make them like they used to, I'm looking at you Brandon Walsh, Dylan McKay, Steve Sanders and David Silver!). I did enjoy the friendship between Drea and Cassie.

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending but I laughed and smiled my way through this and sometimes that is just what you need! If you're from my generation pick this up and relive the time of our lives!

Thank you to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for providing me an E-Arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was a solid book. I’d lean more towards 3.5 stars. I finished it in a day. Even though the treasure hunt seemed out of place, it’s honestly what kept me interested. The story had a good pace, the characters were well developed(I truly did not like Cassie. And I’m okay with that. Not liking her actually made me want to keep reading. See if there was anything redeeming about her.) and I felt that it was just the right amount of nostalgia. Good world building, because she truly captured the essence of the mall.

Cassie just wants to work at the Mall before heading to college in the fall. She's got it all planned out...until the plan falls apart and shes left scrambling to save her last summer here.

Cassie reunites with an old friend and explores so many more areas of the Mall that shes never done before. Cassie truly spends a summer making herself the best her she could be.

“Never referred to by its full name—always and only the mall—this capitalist mecca wasn’t the biggest or the best or the newest our state had to offer, but it was the closest. For that reason alone, the mall was the center of the universe for bored hordes of teens with limited spending money and infinite time to waste.”

Cassie Worthy’s summer isn’t going the way she had planned. The plan was to work at the mall with her boyfriend Troy and save up money before going to school in New York City in the fall. Instead she spent the last six weeks with the worst case of mono her doctor has ever seen and on her first day back at work, she finds out her boyfriend cheated on her. And she was fired. No boyfriend, no job, no plan. But her summer is not a total waste. She finds a new job and unexpectedly reconnects with an old friend and finds love…and also goes on the craziest treasure hunt that involves of all things Cabbage Patch dolls. Needless to say this was not the summer that Cassie had planned but it was exactly what she needed.

This book is filled with all the 90’s nostalgia. I’m a 90’s baby and though I don’t have fond memories of all the references in this book, I did enjoy it. Also being from New Jersey I loved that the book is set in New Jersey…even if it’s south Jersey ; ) For me the book was kinda slow at times and though there are parts of it that picked up..it was just ok. Good but not great. BUT If you are looking for a book that gives you all the 90’s mall nostalgia then…then this book is for you!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book!

*I received an advance reader copy in exchange for a honest review*

3.5 stars

This was a lot of fun! It was very nostalgic that—as a 90's girl—I very much appreciated, but might alienate some readers who don't understand the references. It was so clever to set the entirety of the book at the mall. In the early 90's, teens spent all their time at the mall because that all there was to do. 

I wasn't expecting for this to be a tale of rekindling friendships, but once Cassie is left with no job, she finds herself in the shop owned by her ex best friend's mom. She is whisked away to the back where she ultimately accepts a position as a bookkeeper until she leaves for college in a few months.  Drea and Cassie are now forced to work together and come to terms with how their friendship crumbled in the first place. While hijinks, ex boyfriends, and a little bit of love follow these girls as they travel through the mall, at the end of the day their friendship is the most compelling part of the book.

In all, this was entertaining. Did it grab me emotionally or deliver much depth? No, but it offered an entertaining, albeit cheesy, 300-pages of distraction.

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This quite clever young adult novel is set in a mall during the 1990’s when hair was big, makeup was blue eyeshadow, cassettes the only way to listen to music and a jean jacket a must. It’s when the real Beverly Hills 90210 was a hit.

Cassie and her boyfriend Troy who have been together for years and have a life plan for themselves get ready to begin phase two of the so called plan (college). They will spend their last summer together working as planned at the mall at the America’s Best Cookie store. Until Cassie gets mono and has to spend weeks in bed. When she is fully recovered she thinks life will go back to “as planned” the way it should. Until she finds out Troy has dumped her for another girl and she cannot work at the store any longer and now has no job and she can’t tell her parents. She suddenly feels her whole life becoming a series of downward spirals.

As she interviews at other establishments and judges the employees working there (most who went to school with her) as beneath her, she accidently walks into a clothes shop which she finds is owned by the mother of her bestfriend in fifth grade. Although they have not seen each other since, she gets hired as the bookkeeper for the rest of the summer.

Her past bestfriend Drea who is her total opposite, dates whoever, wears whatever and really doesn’t care what other people think begins teaching her about other ways of seeing people and relaxing her rigid objectives. And Drea begins to learn from Cassie’s positive attributes.

During her summer at the mall, Cassie meets quite the cast of characters and she and Drea find themselves obsessed with finding a “legend has it” treasure hidden somewhere in the mall. Cassie begins to learn some valuable lessons. Such as what is on the outside sometimes is not what is on the inside of a person. And looks can be deceiving. Sometimes it’s those quirks that make a person special.

What Cassie learns from others during her last six weeks until going to college is invaluable. True friendships will last forever and don’t judge others. Loyalty and honesty in friends really exists, real friends have each other’s backs even if they unintentionally hurt you and plans can be changed. When her stint at the mall is over, Cassie walks out very differently than when she first walked in.

The Mall is an inspiring story for young girls with strong female characters and an intriguing treasure hunt which keeps the reader fascinated until the end.

Thank you #NetGalley #WednesdayBooks #MeganMcCafferty #TheMall for the advanced copy. The book will be out July 28.

First of all, thanks to Meghan from Wednesday Books for sending me via NetGalley an eARC in exchange for a honest review.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.


3,5 stars rounded up to 4.


Cassandra Worthy is hit by a bad case of mononucleosis at the beginning of summer that even makes her skip the prom and the graduation ceremony - but it's just a small accident on the way in a plan that involves much bigger and more interesting things than two high school passage rites.

The day she is ready to go back to work at the mall, however, everything changes when her boyfriend of two years Troy gives her the cold shoulder and the she's almost suffocated to death by a cucumber-melon body spray that a sort of demon came out of hell - aka Helen, which apparently has replaced her in her own relationship and at work - sprayed on her as a petty joke.
With no more boyfriend and employment - no more Plan - Cassie feels lost and without direction; things even get worse when her parents also give her news that challenges everything she has always thought about the relationship between her parents.

It's not easy to start over - especially when the summer has already started and only a few places are still looking for staff. Even less easy is when you make a list of the mall's stores and the jobs you can do and as a rating scale to compare them you use the "attractiveness" of the male characters of 90210.
It doesn't help the guy from the music store who makes fun of you just when you're having the worst time and then you burst into tears right in front of your ex-best friend's mother - but hey, in the end it's Gia Bellarosa who offers to hire you, albeit under the bewildered and wary eyes of her daughter Drea, and Gia's boutique is so beyond that it cannot even be classified according to the lineup of 90210.

This is an opportunity to start again, perhaps to find a lost friendship, to learn to flirt and let go, to exchange pungent jokes with the boy from the music store and also to participate in a treasure hunt that begins in the basement of the mall.

Maybe not sticking to the Plan can also lead to great results.


So, we had a good start, then in the second part we went a little downhill.

I was very excited by the beginning: the 90s atmosphere, Cassie's cynical and caustic jokes, her melodramatic way of telling Helen's attack on her, the sudden but always worthy appearances of Zoe Gomez - who later turns out to be a sort of feminist "vigilante".

The reconstruction of the friendship with Drea is something hard and awkward at the beginning and although it was Drea who stopped being her friend seven years earlier, in the end it's Drea who decides to involve Cassie in the treasure hunt and that pushes her to be who she should always have been - and with statement Cassie will understand that two years with Troy, in an almost imperceptible way, have clipped her wings a little at a time.

However, Cassie never stops saying she's going to leave in a few weeks, that she's only keeping herself busy before she begins her real life in New York - getting on my nerves and on everyone's around her. At one point, Cassie believes she's the only one smart enough to go to college - especially since, perhaps unconsciously or perhaps not, she doesn't pay enough attention to Drea and her dreams and almost tramples on them mercilessly.

Cassie made me very angry in those moments, belittling the work of those who work inside a shopping center and those who - by choice or not - decide to not move to a big city.

I've always said that characters similar to me I either love them or hate them and this was the second case because it was precisely my similarities with Cassie that made me feel angry at her.
Because I too had dreams of glory, because I too would have liked to live in a city, because I too have a degree but I am still unemployed here at the moment, because I too - unfortunately - evaluate work based on how "cool" they could be, but I still worked the same in a shopping center last year and in the past years I had a job where I worked every day in summer without ever stopping because here we rely on tourism to get by.
But I never would have dreamed of stepping on other people's dreams believing myself more intelligent or capable because I know I'm not.

The story takes place in a month and a half, so don't expect great insights - it's a story with characters that remain quite shallow and Cassie herself and the boy from the music store don't share their name with each other except at the end despite several interactions, so much so that I asked myself more than once in the course of the reading if the name with which Cassie called him was not really the correct one and I had missed the presentations along the way.

Although the second part is not up to the first - and this is attributable to Cassie and her selfishness - it's still a book that gives great importance to women, their intelligence and their ability to rebuild a life starting from scratch without the need of Prince Charming to come and save them because they really can do it alone.
And it's true that it's also a slightly light and shallow book, but it's fluid thanks to its short chapters and is perfect for the summer - above all it's ideal if you are stuck in a slump like I was before reading it - because it's fun without wanting to be it at all costs and although I was born in 1989 (so I lived the 90s only in part), I found in this book all that distinguished them and all that was important for teenagers at the time.

I enjoyed reading several aspects of this book! The pacing was wonderful, characters were well drawn, and the reading experience on the whole was delightful.

This book was a melodramatic fun experience to read about. As a kid and growing up, I loved going to the mall, and I still do. I usually never buy anything, but it's always been this really great place to hang out with friends, try on clothes you're never going to buy, etc. I think that the writing in this book was upbeat, fast paced, definitely dramatic since the main characters are teenagers, so a job well done in that aspect. I wanted to keep reading to find out the next clues to the treasure hunt and I found the interactions between characters to be highly amusing. Being that I was born in 1999, I didn't understand a good chunk of the references so I couldn't enjoy that aspect as much, but it didn't bother me too much. Unfortunately, what ended up bothering me was the main character Cassie. I was hoping she'd go through some character development or something, but the entire time she was this anti-feminist who slut shamed Drea constantly, was very whiny and thought that her problems were the only important ones, got mad at her mom for making a choice for HERSELF and her betterment, and ranked working at stores on a scale so that it seemed that some jobs were more important and elite than others (which is really disrespectful to the people who work these jobs and I did not appreciate it at all). I get that she was going through a bad break up and all this stuff, but she was just so stuck up and thought because she was smart she was better than other people, especially other women who cared about their appearance and clothing (which if they do, is none of her concern, we should support all women). There was just too much negative energy from her. It was really disappointing not seeing any character development in Cassie from the beginning to the end of the book, well a little at the very end, but I don't think it negates the fact that she was awful for 90% of the book. I would have liked this book a whole lot more if she had been a better constructed character. On the other hand, I actually really liked Drea and how she didn't fit into society's box. She did what she wanted, spoke up about what she thought, and was overall a badass. I'm so disappointed in this book because I thought I'd really enjoy it. 


Writing: 7/10
Characters: 3/10
Plot: 5/10
Ending: 4/10
Originality: 6/10
Overall: 25/50
Cover: 7/10

This book definitely did not go the way that I expected. What I predicted would be a cheesy YA with flagrant 80's references every five seconds was actually a lot more nuanced than that. Don't get me wrong, the cheese was still there, but not in the in-your-face way that I was bracing myself for. We follow Cassie, who upon returning to the mall the summer before college, loses both her boyfriend and her job in the blink of an eye. Somehow, she gets a job at her ex-best friend's family's boutique. Said ex-friend, Drea, enlists Cassie's help to find a rumored "treasure" hidden somewhere in the mall. And all the while, Cassie keeps on running into this Morrissey-wannabe who works at the music shop.

All in all, the nostalgia factor was fun without being too overwhelming. Elements of the '80s- like cabbage patch kids, the music references, and the fashion- were all brought up in a way that felt more worldbuilding and less "Hey! Don't forget we're in the '80's!"

The plot felt intriguing enough, with the girls running around on a treasure hunt the mall.

However, I wish I cared about the characters more.