Book Review: An Abundance of Katherines


“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”

“If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?”


And with this book review, not including series which I cannot at this time review (as I haven't reached their current terminations), I am officially caught up in book reviews, and we will lay off the one-a-day diet.  Applause for Hannah!



Colin Singleton is a child prodigy. Or was.  As he is quick to remind people, child prodigy is not the same thing as genius, and many child prodigies grow up to become nothing.  So here Colin is, at the end of his childhood, trying to figure out how to make his transition into meaning something to the adult world.  He also has a type.  He has dated (and been dumped by) nineteen girls, all of them named Katherine.  Even all spelled that way.  So, Colin hopes to use his knowledge of Katherines to make The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability.  Hopefully, this theorem will be an equation which can predict the outcome and duration of any relationship.  As Colin seeks to find himself and understand the world, he still realizes that he is a teenager, and angst will happen.

 I like John Green.  I was holding out on a general statement until I had read enough books to find a pattern.  And I haven't read them all--though Paper Towns is on hold at the library--but after reading Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines, I believe that I can say that I enjoy his books.  This one was much less ripe with drug use and sex than Looking for Alaska, and I appreciated that. That was really pulling Looking for Alaska down in the ratings.  So, anyways, I enjoyed this book.  

 I do have to say that I just didn't connect with Lindsey very well, when usually I connect with all of John Green's characters, even the ones I don't identify with.  But, Hassan and Colin I definitely connected with and understood.  I think that Green is very good at capturing that teenager/young adult feeling of, "Where am I going?  And what have I ever achieved with my life that actually means something?"  That feeling that the world is not really your oyster, even though everyone says that it is--it could be, but you are missing something.  And that feeling that you, for the first time, are actually self-aware, and that's scary.

I will bequeath it 4 stars. 

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