The Mall

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My Opinion

“If we put history totally behind us, how do we learn anything about ourselves?”

(4 / 5) This was such a fun jump back in time! It’s about the nineties and a young woman working at the mall. She goes through failures and triumphs and watches her parents divorce, all while preparing to leave for college in fall.

I loved the music! This brought back my own experiences at the mall and my love for it. Good old Cottonwood Mall that is now torn down, sadly. But there were some great trips down memory lane.

McCafferty was great at placing me right in the moment. I was able to feel the same emotions I did as a teen. She made it more exciting by placing a treasure in it where the two teens searched for clues and bonded through the journey. It felt fairly realistic to me from my teen years and I loved this flashback.

When one teen needs a makeover, I love the thought behind it. It wasn’t to be prettier or sexier, it was to be and find the person within her that had been smothered for years. It was a great message!

All in all, it was a fun read. Thank you to Goodreads for the giveaway win and for St. Martins Press for the gifted copy. This book is released July 28, 2020. 

The Mall

Megan McCafferty

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.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings. 

Detailed Content Review

Language 

F***- 5

H***- 24

S***- 22

A**- 9

B****- 12

D***- 7

Bas****-

Religious Cursing-

J****- 1

Chr***- 1

G**- 15

L***-

Derogatory terms etc-

BS

Gawd 

Dick 

Flipping the bird 

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

A young man regularly smells of marajuana.

A woman smokes a cigarette. 

Packs of cigarettes are passed around at a party young women attends. Also cups are full of supposedly alcohol. A young woman is offered a mixture of kool aid and everclear. She turns it down.

A young man has a cocaine habit.

A man is drinking alcohol. 

A party serves alcohol.

Two young women witness a drug deal. 

A young woman used to sneak to the roof to smoke cigarettes. 

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

• Minor LGBTQ+ aspects included*

A young woman decides she needs to have sex with her boyfriend. 

A young woman talks about cinnamon flavored lube and glow in the dark condoms and penis shaped ice cube trays. 

A young man is “shoving his tongue in her mouth.” She puts her hands in his back pockets and massages his behind. 

“Stop thinking with your wang…”

A couple make out on the couch. She straddles him and show “public displays of affection.”

A young man is staring at a young woman’s cleavage, the young man walks into a tree. 

A young woman takes something out of her bra, “between her glistening breasts…. I’m sure he would have died and gone to masturbation heaven.”

“My gut twisted at the thought of whatever kinky contortions had made their sex fears possible…”

“We should have sex.”

Two young women debate over one needing “to get laid.”

A young woman and young man make out and “dry hump” in a back room. He slides a hand between her thighs and realizes her skirt gives him “easy access.” When she stops, he says she “can’t leave me here like this” and shows her the bulge in his pants.

A young man tells people a young woman “almost bit off a chunk of his junk.”

A young woman complains about gossip saying she gave the worst blow job. 

“Plenty of my exes knew how to passionately work their wood…” a young woman jokes. She previously joked about an ex having a micropenis to the entire cafeteria.

A woman has a “downright orgasmic reaction” at a store. 

A young woman sees rock climbing supplies and wonders if its a “kinky sex-harness thing?”

A young man kisses a young woman, their chests crashing together while they make out to a song. 

A young woman vaguely implies she was raped. Her entire personality and outer look (clothes etc) changed after that. It would be easy to miss that she is implying rape. 

A young man kisses a young woman on the forehead, nose, chin then mouth. They kiss in the front seat, her mentioning them being half naked and fogging up windows, then they “did even more” in the back seat. She loses her virginity and “shares her body” and “discover places (she) hadn’t allowed anyone else to go.” “Skin to skin exploration”  Her friend will be so proud of her for losing her virginity. She daydreamed about when they could do it again because they needed to plan it out as they could only be alone in his car. 

A young woman “elbow pressed” her boobs together when she saw her boyfriend. He kisses her. She says she will take off her clothes and goes in for a kiss. 

A young woman is given lesbian erotica manifestos. One is, “the many myths of female masterbation.” And some pornographic photos. 

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

A young woman attacks a young woman and dunks her head in a fountain multiple times. 

Potentially Intense Themes

A young woman’s parents are splitting up. 

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.