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Review: “An Abundance of Katherines” by John Green

  • Writer: Holly Jane - Writer
    Holly Jane - Writer
  • Jun 26, 2020
  • 4 min read

Genre(s): Young Adult, Fiction

Favourite Quote: “You can never love people as much as you miss them.”

Favourite Character: None. Literally no one. I either like or dislike them all equally.

*Please note, this review MAY contain spoilers. Read at your own risk!*

John Green has been on my radar for a number of years, having first found he and his brother Hank on Youtube many moons ago. I’ve been meaning to read more of his stuff for a long time after delving into The Fault in Our Stars and liking it, but I didn’t manage to get around to it until now.

Colin Singleton, an anagram loving child prodigy has just been dumped by Katherine number 19 and his heart is broken. Facing the last summer before college begins, his long-term friend Hassan, promises a summer of freedom, brotherhood and good times ahead, and ultimately marches his best friend into a trip on the road and new horizons to quell the ache for a Katherine in his life.

The tone of the book is quirky and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The dry humour John evokes is both funny and thought provoking at times and we get to explore the complicated relationship between Colin and well… Everyone really.

Pros

  • Even though this road trip only really made it to Gutshot and stopped for 98% of the book, it did feel like I was in the backseat with two haphazard teenagers who had no idea what was going on with their lives or what’s really important to them.

  • Lindsey’s characterisation was nice. She started out as the tough girl who could take care of herself and everyone could rely on, but she started opening up and I liked her more for it.

  • Hollis also had a similar journey. She was so bland at the beginning and didn’t come across as a mother figure at all, but there was a welcome change here.

  • I liked Hassan more towards the end of the book. Less annoying and reinvigorated with weird wisdom and maturity.

  • Really organic teenage conversation in most parts, which doesn’t feel too forced and out of character.

  • Didn’t see the small Katherine 1/19 twist!

  • The feral pig chapter was great.

Cons


  • Words and expressions, I would gladly never want to hear again: kafir, sitzpinkler, jewfro, fugging, fug, fugger, hearse, theorem, anagram, and yes; Katherine.

  • The plot dragged in some places and going on the descriptions of Gutshot, it seems dull and boring.

  • Lindsey’s boyfriend Colin and his friends are referenced not as their names but assigned abbreviations. This really got me lost and confused in some places, because I didn’t quite get who was talking and present in the scene.

  • It seems like a bit of an odd choice to name the antagonist Colin, when our main protagonist has the same name. I kind of get this to a certain extent – to highlight the differences between two Colin’s and their backgrounds as world’s apart, but it didn’t really hit the spot for me.

  • Realistically, who has met nineteen individuals of the same name in under twenty years of age? Perhaps I need to get out more.

  • I hated hearing about Colin’s Katherine Theorem – but admittedly I’m biased because I have a deeply rooted hatred for Maths. Interestingly, John sought the help of a mathematician friend to help calculate and explain the theorem in a realistic sense. Of course, the official explanation totally goes over my head, but I’m just happy to be here.

  • Just get over yourself Colin!

Final thoughts

I’m going to be completely honest with you. If you asked me a week ago if I liked this book or not, I’d have insisted that it would probably be the first on my DID NOT FINISH pile and I hated the very pages the words were printed on. Harsh, but halfway through the book I took a break from reading for a few weeks, which resulted in me forcing myself to grow a pair and finish the damn thing to get the full experience!

I’ve always found that John Green works on a slightly different plane to me and his brain works on a maturity level that mine doesn’t seem to. With each of his books I’ve read so far, I haven’t hated them, but it takes them a while to sink in for me to really ruminate and understand the lessons and the psychology of the main character, which always seems to annoy me in some way. In retrospect, it’s cleverly calculated and I realise that we are allowed to hate these parts of characters, the very same way we may not agree with parts of our peers personalities in our everyday lives.

An Abundance of Katherines was finally finished and I’m happy and satisfied that I forced myself to keep reading. It didn’t change my life but it was an eventual ending to a nice coming of age story, with some life lessons learned and two teens happier for it.

To conclude, I’m giving this 3 starts out of 5. Would I read this again? Perhaps. But for now, I’ll keep it on my kindle along with my other finished reads.

About the author:

John Green is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, and Turtles All the Way Down. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was the 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than 55 languages and over 24 million copies are in print.

Check out John Green’s social media:

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As always, I’m taking requests for reads I should review next. Feel free to drop me a line via the site or my social media pages. Thanks for reading!

HJ

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HOLLY JANE - AUTHOR

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