Stuck at the Galleria
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 bt 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.
- Action Girl: NORA. And also Cici and Piper.
- Adorkable: Tre and Grassy.
- Air Vent Escape: Nora and Tre try to perform one, but it backfires when Tre inadvertently lampshades the trope.
- Author Avatar: Tre was definitely one of these, and still is to some extent.
- Beige Prose: The text can veer into this occasionally.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lilly.
- Better Than a Bare Bulb
- Bland-Name Product: Various examples throughout the book, for example, "Guitar Villain."
- 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!
- Naive Newcomer: Tre.
- Post Modernism: Oh, yeah.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Crew.
- Shout-Out: A whole dang page of them.
- Movie Within A Book: Finding The Lost.
- 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.
- There's No B in Movie: Finding The Lost is a crappy one from the 90's, and is Nora's favorite movie.