Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be 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, washed-up 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.
Thoughts: So having really enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, I approach any new John Green with excitement and fear. Excitement, because I'm anticipating another good book, fear because what if I'm disappointed.
I wasn't completely disappointed. In fact, if this had been the first John Green I'd read, I would have thought it was ok, but I wouldn't have rushed out to read his other books.
The characters in this just didn't really gel for me. Colin's best friend Hassan I found to be an annoying little twerp and Colin himself was only slightly better. In fact, although I know teenagers are a bit self-obsessed, Colin managed to take it to a whole new level.
And then there was the footnotes. Footnotes work in books if they add something to the story. Pratchett is a master at it. The footnotes in this were just distracting and stopped the flow of the story.
If you are a John Green fan, read it, but be prepared to finish it and just go hmmm.
An Abundance of Katherines gets 2 stars
* Did not like it
** It was OK
*** Liked it
**** Really liked it
***** It was amazing
