An Abundance of Katherines – John Green

I only recently stumbled upon John Green as an author.  I read “Looking for Alaska” and “Paper Towns” before “An Abundance of Katherines” and really all three books are very well told and a lot of the praise here for “An Abundance of Katherines” is equally attributable to the other two.  John Green is what I would consider a crossover author: while his books are aimed more at a teenage audience, my teenage years are long past and I still thoroughly enjoyed them. 

“An Abundance of Katherines” is a story about washed-up child prodigy Colin Singleton.  He has an eidetic memory, is great with anagrams, ok at maths and thinks he is socially inept.  Except when it comes to Katherines.  To date, Colin has had nineteen girlfriends, all named Katherine.  And he has been dumped by all nineteen.

Despite being a child prodigy, it is very easy to relate to Colin who is dealing with very typical teenager angst.  All of John Green's books are full of believable, if somewhat peculiar, characters.  "An Abundance of Katherines" is the lightest in tone and themes of John Green's novels so far which made it a quick enjoyable read.

Michael L.