An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washedup child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun–but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

Colin is a child prodigy who just graduated high school and is trying to find a way to 'matter', to make his mark on the world, when he is dumped, for the 19th time, by a girl named Katherine. See, Colin has a thing for girls with the name Katherine. In fact, he has never dated a non-Katherine. While wallowing in sorrow over this latest breakup he decides there has to be a mathematical theorem that will predict the outcome of relationships. Who will be the Dumper and who will be the Dumpee.Meanwhile, he is out on a road trip with his best friend, Hassan, and ends up in Gutshot, Tennessee where he meets a slew of characters and learns a lot about life and himself.

This is only my second John Green book but I am in love with his writing. Though he writes YA books, they are not dumbed down. The dialogue his characters carry on are not what you normally hear in books for young adults but sophisticated and full of SAT worthy words. Why shouldn't YA books be full of intelligent characters with big vocabularies? He, also, can write characters that normally would be annoying or un-likeable and he makes you love them. Colin, for example is whiny and self-centered but there is such a realness about him that you can't help but like him in the end. Hassan was my absolute favorite. I laughed out loud quite a few times while reading 'Katherines' and most of the time it was due to something Hassan said.

The plot gets slow and sluggish at times. In fact it was a bit hard for me to get into at first but it is all necessary for the development of the characters. It is a bit predictable, too. But, it made the math nerd AND word nerd in me so very happy. It is chock full of anagrams and mathematical equations. Green even made me like the footnotes, which I do not particularly like in books.

Was this as good as 'A Fault in Their Stars'? No, not even close. It was a fun, fast and very well written book that I think most will enjoy. I kept going back and forth on what to rate this. In the end, Greens writing got it the higher rating from me.

4 out of 5 stars
GET IT HERE:An Abundance of Katherines