An Abundance of Katherines Reviews

I just want to start by saying that before this, I have never read a single John Green book. I first came across this book in 8th grade, and decided I would read it when I was in high school. Sophomore year rolled around, and I found it again in my school library. One grueling month (and attempted reevaluation of my reading choices) later, I finished the book, and I've got to say, it was disappointing.

The book starts off with the protagonist, Colin Singleton, having recently broken up with his (19th) girlfriend. Here's the catch: Colin only dates girls named Katherine. It even has to be spelled exactly like that. Colin has never dumped a Katherine; they've always dumped him. His only friend - an overweight, Mulsim, Judge Judy fan named Hassan - convinces him to go on a road trip with him to Tennessee. There, they meet Lindsey Lee Wells, who is apparently "not-so-distantly" related with Franz Ferdinand, whose resting place they find her at. More characters in her town are introduced, although they were hard for me to keep track of. I don't know if it's just me, but it wasn't easy to figure out who was who from just acronyms (I got TOC, "The Other Colin", though).

I think I forgot to mention this, but Colin is considered a prodigy. When he was a young child, he managed to get on a quiz show for smart kids. Only Colin doesn't want to be a prodigy, he wants to be a genius and have his own Eureka moment. While in Tennessee, he comes up with it: a mathematical equation that can determine the likelihood of how long a romantic relationship will last. To the poor readers, this means many pages filled with nothing but math equations. It got to the point where I was completely bored and wouldn't read the book for a day or two.

I can't say there were many things I liked about this book, now that I think about it. It was boring, confusing, and I found Colin to be really annoying and unrelatable. If there's one saving grace, it's Hassan and his humor. Other than that, there's really nothing good that can be said about this book, at least in my eyes.

Overall, An Abundance of Katherines is a disappointment. If John Green's other books are anything like this, then I'm probably not going to read them.