Literature / Stuck at the Galleria

It's Time to Get Stuck.

Tre: Are things always this weird in the mall after hours?

Nora: It's even crazier on Saturday nights.

It all starts when a timid daydreamer named Tre Listman accepts a dance date from Fillmore Jr. High's resident queen bee Lilly. When things go awry, Tre leaves mortified and runs to the Galleria Mall. After a bit too much root beer and a freak accident involving a shopping cart and a bad idea, Tre finds himself in the Galleria after closing hours... and there's no way out.

Naturally, Tre doesn't take this too well, but his worries are straightened out by The Crew, a ragtag group of seven misfits who live in the mall every night. But the group's not alone, thanks to the mall's overzealous rent-a-cop team, led by Carl Weisberger, a particularly stiff and rude guard with a bit too much dedication to his job. In addition, there may very well be someone else entirely pulling all the strings behind everyone's backs...

It's funny, weird, wild, ridiculous, romantic, noir, adventurous, mysterious, dramatic, tragic, and one frakkin' sweet ride— it's Stuck at the Galleria!

Stuck at the Galleria is the first book in the Stuck series by Lyle Terry (or, as he's known on TV Tropes, Tre). The full release of the book is still up in the air, but until then Terry is putting the book up online at Wattpad.com.

It's Super Quicky Trope Time!

• Air Vent Escape: Nora and Tre try to perform one, but it backfires when Tre inadvertently lampshades the trope.

• Bland-Name Product: Various examples throughout the book, for example, "Guitar Villain" in place of Guitar Hero.
• Brats with Slingshots: The Crew used to be this but then they upgraded to Nerf guns.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Between Tre and Nora, who find out that they're childhood friends while bonding.
• Chop Sockey: Parodied (affectionately, of course!). "I must say that your Glass Fu is no match for my Judo Chop!"
• Drunk on Milk: Well, root beer, but it's how Tre gets himself into his accident.
• Long-Lost Relative: A variation: Nora and Tre were best friends in the fourth grade but never saw each other again after she moved away.
• Medium Awareness: Nora makes multiple references to the fact that they're in a book, though she's subtle enough that it's not obvious to Tre.
  Nora: He really didn't know!

• Shout-Out: A whole dang page of them.

• Suck E. Cheese's: Bucky Duck's Pizza Parlour, or as Max describes it, "where parents send their children's dreams to go die".
• The Mall: It's set mainly in one named the Westland Galleria, but after hours.
• Unabashed B-Movie Fan: Finding The Lost is a crappy B-movie from the 90's, and is Nora's favorite movie.