- The Mall was a wonderful 90s-inspired novel that I devoured in less than a week (pretty big for me). Cassie, a girl bound for college in NYC at the end of the summer, finds herself dumped and in need of a job at the mall before she sets out on the next chapter of her life. She finds herself at the gate of the Bellarosa Boutique, and the store owner’s daughter used to be her best friend before Drea dubbed her “too uncool.” A friendship is rekindled once Drea drags her into a treasure hunt of sorts involving Cabbage Patch dolls and really badly hand-drawn maps, and that is one of the aspects I really enjoyed about Cassie’s adventures in the mall. I loved how new characters were introduced after each new clue lead them to a different store of the mall, and they usually had some tie to Drea, who seems to be the equivalent of mall royalty. Through this little adventure, Cassie is on her own personal quest to discover who she is, to ultimately find fulfillment and transforming into the best possible version of herself while working with the Bellarosa’s.
“I was excited about [college] and New York City, about seeing what life beyond Pineville had in store for me. Yet, a part of me wondered if everything I really needed to know — about family and friendship and love and loyalty and betrayal and sisterhood [...] — I had already learned that summer at the mall.”
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