I absolutely loved this book! It reads less like a novel and more like reading someone's journal. The writing is clever and the storytelling makes you not want to put the book down! ( )

Article first published as Book Review: Wallflower by Holly-Jane Rahlens on Blogcritics.

Serendipity is a wonderful word and an even more interesting meaning. Making desirable discoveries by accident, good fortune, or luck, coincide in with finding something unexpected. Any way you look at it, the word has wonderful connotations.

In Wallflower, a novel by Holly-Jane Rahlens, we follow the life of Molly Beth Lenzfeld as she makes a stab at living the life she thinks she is looking for. Spending time with her father in Berlin is not what she expected, and she is leaving to head back to New York where he will join her later. In eleventh grade, she is ready to be back in the states, her own form of comfort zone. Having come to Berlin to stay with her father while he spends a year working, she thought she would feel closer to her mother. She died of cancer when Molly was just eleven, and she still misses her terribly.

Having received her father’s permission, she will be staying with her older sister until he returns. She has decided to take one last trek while she is here; she wants to visit her mother’s home. Molly plans on taking a part of the wall her mother helped put together, back with her. This will be a challenge, she will have to use the Berlin transit system and pass over the Berlin Wall. Having missed the excitement of the wall coming down this will be her first visit.
On her way, she runs into a girl she knows named Carlotta Smith. Carlotta is everything that Molly is not. She is attractive, small and well built. She dresses outrageously and behaves that way as well. Molly is rather shy, and quite tall. The other thing she really dislikes about herself is her big feet. So when a young man boards the train, she looks quickly, noting he is very good looking and then looks away. Carlotta goes in for the kill, and instantly they are talking. When Carlotta gets off at her stop, the boy stays on, but he doesn’t talk or seem interested in conversation. Having to change from train to train to reach her destination, Molly is concerned she will get lost. When she runs into some drunks, she is afraid.

It is here where Michael Maier (Mick) steps in and rescues her. So begins an interesting and unique relationship, built in a matter of hours, moving throughout East and West Berlin through the transit system. Will they become friends or is there more in the camaraderie they have experienced. Has Serendipity come into play one more time?
Rahlens has given us an in depth look into Berlin, and the differences of the East and West. The fall of the Wall comes into play, and she also takes us to the inside, using the Berlin transit system as a way to get around. The scenery comes to life and she does such an excellent job with her descriptors it is easy to picture the city.

Her characters are fun and somewhat typical of children the world over at that same age. She does a wonderful job of bringing them together and finding the things that they both find of interest that seem to link them, which draws them closer. As they make their way through the city, and between the different factions of East and West, she sets a fun and unique tone that keeps the intrigue and interest at its height. In Carlotta, Rahlens creates a foil that could either push them apart or draw them together, depending on how they react to her presence.
This is a charming story of a young woman coming of age and finding herself. In a simple matter of hours, can one’s life really change?

I would recommend this for the YA reader; it is full of charm and history as well. Learning more about Berlin and the Wall is an added enticement, and quite interesting as well. With the background and history, this would also be a good book for a reading or book club. It is well written, excellently researched and fun.

This book was received free from the publisher. All opinions are my ( )

Molly Lenzfeld always considered herself a wallflower. She said no one ever asked her to dance or paid attention to her since she was so tall. Coming from New York City and being in Berlin while her father was working as a theoretical chemist was an adventure for her in more than one way.

On Thanksgiving Day, she was on her way to see where her mother had lived as a child. She was not to be gone the entire day, but as she rode the subway system, a handsome young man caught her fancy and she caught his.

The book tells of their day and how Molly turned a trip to visit the town where her mother lived into a love story.

The book is a quick, sweet read. You get to experience the emotions Molly experiences as she is with this stranger whom she feels is her real first love.

The author did a great job with conversation which made up the most of the book. I really enjoyed the chapter titles....they were clever and stretched your imagination concerning what was going to happen in the next few pages.

You will love Molly...a sweet, innocent character who wears her emotions on her sleeve. Mike her friend from the subway is an interesting character as well. He is unique in his dress, his humor, and his manner.

I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in love...and that would probably be just about all of us.

Excellent book...well written and interesting content. It is a true love story with added suspense and hope. 5/5

This review is hard for me to write, because this books was just okay for me, so I don't really have much to say. There was nothing I really liked, nothing I really hated. I feel like it has a small target audience, and people in that audience will like this book, but it just so happens that I am not in the target audience. I felt sort of out of the loop. Let me explain... The book takes place over a couple of hours in Berlin, right after the fall of the Berlin wall. In the story, the main character is traveling by subway/train for most of the book. The author keeps naming streets, subway stations, etc. all in german, which kind of got overwhelming. After a lot of words such as Schonhauser Allee, Schoneweide, Greifenhagener Strasse and Zuruckbleiben, I started to get frustrated and just skipped over the words.

Also, I felt like not much happened... I did like how the story took place over such a short amount of time (four hours), that was different, but it felt sort of uneventful. I was never begging for the book to end, or anything like that, I just wanted there to be more.

So, that's what I thought, but then again, I don't feel like me and the book were a good match. If you can speak german, or have any personal connects to Berlin, maybe you'd like this story better than I did. I have read reviews of people who really liked it, I'm just sorry to say that I am not one of them. ( )

A sweet tale of discovered teenage love along the cold oppressive Wall of Berlin.

Wallflower is a short delightful novel, 138 pages of pure fun. This book is a witty and charming Berlin love story you will want to read in one sitting. It is so engaging and Rahlens writing style is so easy to read and quite comical. The main character is 16 year old Molly a rather tall girl who is very self conscious about all the things that make her special. Molly struggles with these insecurities like most teenage girl at her age, comparing herself to other teenage girl. Other characters include a fr-enemy named Colletta and then Mick who is every girls foreign dream guy. Molly has her father who has brought her to Berlin on a work assignment and they socialize with some friends in the apartment building where they are staying. However Mick is the hot attraction guy with tall dark curly hair, a total stranger who is about to change her life forever. Mick is a sweet, tender guy who cares about everything a girl might have to say and is easy to fall in love with, yet also the kind of guy who gives you those jealousy pangs, dare he speak to another girl. Molly has just these feelings surface because just when she happens upon a reason to stay in Berlin she comes across competition.

Wallflower was just a joy to read and I learned about Berlin, The Wall, the surrounding city and most important of all the people who live there. If you have never traveled any where near Berlin or even if you have, Wallflower is a great way to step into Berlin, like a little time warp into the past, but not to far back. Just quick enough that maybe while you are there you may bring up some memories of your own past, maybe even memories of travel or even a crush of your own when you were a teen. ( )