Review – An Abundance of Katherines by John Green (4/5 stars)

I read Paper Towns by Green and absolutely loved it.  So, I decided to read his previous books as well.  This was a great coming-of-age/road trip story that was quirky and entertaining.  A highly recommended read.  I did like Paper Towns a bit better than this book, but this book was still a great read.

Colin is a child prodigy; he learned to read at an incredibly early age, knows a magnitude of strange random facts, and is constantly anagramming in his head.  He also has a quirky thing for Katherines; he has dated 19 of them and been dumped by them all.  After being dumped by Katherine 19 he has fallen into a funk; his buddy Hassan decides what Colin needs is a road trip.  So off they go on a road trip.  Colin is determined to use the time on the road to develop a mathematical theorem that will predict how long a relationship will last.

This was a fun read.  Full of interesting footnotes and quirky mathematical equations; as well as interesting characters.  All of the characters are exceedingly well done.  Green’s writing is superb.  He does a great job of putting a lot of interesting facts, a lot of quirkiness, great humor, and some coming of age lessons into this interesting read.

The book was very engaging; I never got bored.  I liked all the funny facts that Colin knew, I also enjoyed Colin’s struggle to work through the mathematics to predict the relationship equation.

There wasn’t much that I didn’t like about this book.  But I did like Green’s book Paper Towns better than this one, I think it is mainly the characters that make the difference.  This book isn’t quite as adventurous or mysterious as Paper Towns was.  I never really liked Colin all that much, he was a bit self-centered…that made a difference in how I liked the book overall.

Overall this was a great read.  I didn’t like it as much as Paper Towns but it was close.  I look forward to reading the only John Green book I haven’t read yet “Looking for Alaska“.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– The Young Adult Reading Challenge
– The 100+ Book Reading Challenge