I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Night of the Mallrats by Nicolina Torres Published by Harper Perennial on October 6 2026
Genres: Adult, Horror, Time travel
Pages: 384
Format: ARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: A fun mash-up of murder mystery, time travel and 1990s culture, Night of the Mallrats is an entertaining blast from the past.
I thought this was going to be a time travel story, and it is, sort of. But the time travel element is much smaller than I expected, so I think my expectations were a little skewed going in. But Night of the Mallrats turned out to be a lot of fun! I had a few small issues, but overall Nicolina Torres is a solid writer, and she’s crafted a multilayered, character focused murder mystery with some big 1990s vibes.
Back in high school, Colleen, Andy, Tim, Missy, Kevin and Beth were close friends and did everything together, until December of 1994 when Beth disappeared and her boyfriend Ezra was found murdered in the mall fountain. Beth’s body was never found, and her case turned cold.
Thirty years later, Colleen has returned to her hometown to reunite with her old friends. The local mall, where they spent so many happy hours during their teens, is about to be torn down, and the others want to visit it one last time. Colleen isn’t too keen on breaking in at night, but Kevin assures her no one will find out. What Colleen doesn’t know is that there’s an odd temporal portal in the middle of the fountain—the very location where Ezra’s body was found—that transports you back to 1994 if you stand in the fountain at exactly midnight.
Kevin and the others have been using the portal to go back in time to December 1994, the day that Beth went missing. They are determined to uncover what really happened to her, something local law enforcement was never able to do. And this is their last shot, since the mall tear down begins the next day.
As the night wears on and Colleen, Kevin, Tim, Missy and Andy (who are invisible to those around them) start to follow Beth and Ezra on their last day, secrets among the friends come to light, secrets that have been buried for thirty years.
In addition to the “time travel” POV, most of the story is flashbacks to 1994 that take place in the six months leading up to Beth’s disappearance. This is the meat of the story, as the author digs deep into the characters and their relationships with each other, setting the stage for the big reveal at the end. We also get a big dose of 1990s nostalgia, which was a ton of fun (references to mall stores that are no longer in business, popular bands and songs, 1990s movies and more), and I absolutely loved reliving that decade. Torres captures that wonderful feeling of carefree innocence before “real life” and adulthood intrude. The six friends are a tight group, but of course there are petty jealousies, secrets and typical friend group fractures to show that not everything is perfect.
Of course, with the 1994 setting you also get a lot of cringey dialog with men sexually objectifying women and young girls, including Beth’s sleazy boss (she works at the Gap) who is highly inappropriate towards his teen employees. The romantic entanglements of all the characters are important to the story, though, so these sections felt true to the time period.
An additional POV follows a police officer named Corey Haskell who just happens to be Missy’s older brother. In the present timeline (2024), Chief Haskell is made aware of some new evidence from Beth’s old case and he decides to reopen it. His storyline gave some heft to the story with actually police work, and I enjoyed Corey’s chapters a lot. We also learn that Corey is hiding his own secrets, some of which come out in the flashback chapters.
And while I did enjoy the mystery, there are a lot of characters and POVs to keep track of, not to mention time periods. The story gets bogged down at times by too much going on, and the reader also has to keep track of each character’s teen personality versus what their life is like as an adult—careers, marriages, kids etc. It’s much harder to write a story that jumps around a lot, and sometimes Night of the Mallrats works in that respect and sometimes it doesn’t. I also think it was a bit long and could have been trimmed in spots.
But the reveal of what happened to Beth was really well done, and I didn’t guess who the killer was. Anyone who’s ever spent their teen years at the mall—and those who were teens in the 90s in particular—will find a lot to relate to.
Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.
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