Books | An Abundance of Katherines.

So, after ‘umming’  and ‘aahing’  for ages over whether to post this review or not I’ve decided to bite the bullet and do it. I put the feelers out to try suss out how book reviews would go down and the feedback was quite positive so here it goes! I’m a big reader and for all I know you might be too so why not give you some inspiration of what books to pick up (or avoid).

Where to start with ‘An Abundance of Katherines’(or ‘Katherines’ as I’ll be abbreviating it to for this post). Well, I picked up this book whilst in Liverpool way back when and only just got around to reading it on my recent journey to London. Tubes make for great reading opportunities! I chose this book as I absolutely adored The Fault in Our Stars ('Stars') and the same author, the amazingly talented John Green, writes this.

‘Katherines’ is based around 17 year-old, anagram lover Colin Singleton. This former child prodigy has a thing for girls named Katherine – 19 of them to be exact. And has just been dumped; again. He is patiently waiting to have his very own ‘Eureka’ moment that will make him either a genius, or famous. The story follows him and his best friend Hassan on a road trip to help Colin get over the girl and discover his very own ‘Eureka’. But of course this doesn’t go exactly as planned as they meet a girl named Lindsey and Colin searches for his ’Eureka’ in a Theorem using maths and relationships.

As far as characters go, Colin isn’t a bad protagonist but I did find him a little boring at times. It’s really his relationship with Hassan that makes the book and gave me some sincere ‘laugh-out-loud’ moments. Hassan’s care-free and lazy attitude contrasts wonderfully with Colin’s uptight and anxious one and I think this is why they connect so well. Although I did enjoy the relations between the two I can’t help but feel the author could have done so much more with them. I felt like I was constantly waiting for something major to happen and it just didn’t. I found Lindsey to be your typical love interest character, and although she was a strong female (my favourite) I didn’t find myself loving her the way I did Hazel from 'Stars' or Liesel from The Book Thief. Maybe this was because the book wasn’t from her perspective as the other two were.

In saying this I did like the chapter length and writing style of the book. Being inside Colin’s constantly anagramming brain was fun, and the footnotes at the bottom of the pages were charming, I always find they give a book more personality. However being inside Colin’s brain whilst he works on his Theorem was just exhausting. Too many graphs and numbers in my opinion and it made it hard to enjoy. (Although it is pretty impressive that it was all real; John Green got one of his friends, Daniel Biss, to make an actual formula for the book.)

I really wanted to love this book, believe me. But I just didn’t, and I didn’t hate it I just know I won’t be reaching for it again as I will with 'Stars' or The Hunger Games. My love for 'Stars' may have influenced my thoughts on 'Katherines' as I may have expected more of an emotional journey that unfortunately wasn’t there.

Not a bad read but unfortunately only getting 2.5/5 from me!

What did you think of this post? Would you like to see more book reviews from me? Let me know! xo