Arc Review: The Mall By Megan McCafferty

The Mall By Megan McCafferty

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Fiction
Pages: 320 pages
Publication Date: July 28th 2020
Publisher: Wednesday Books
My Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Synopsis: New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall.

The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans…

Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.

My Thoughts: So I have to say the cover is what originally drew me in to this book. Then after reading the synopsis I was sold. I was born in the early 90s so this sounded like the perfect nostalgic trip. I am so happy that Bex @ As Told By Bex had this on her July TBR. I probably would have put off reading this. Surprisingly this was just the book I had been looking for!

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.

*I would just like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.*

Have you guys read this book early? If so did you end up enjoying it? If not are you planning to pick it up when it comes out? I would love to hear from you guys in the comments below.

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