An Abundance of Katherines by John Green is a story about a young man named Colin Singleton. Colin is a genius who considers himself a prodigy. He gets defensive when people call him a genius because he did not believe he is one. Colin believes that because he is a prodigy, girls don’t want to be with him. When it comes to relationships, Colin only dates Katherines. John Green has also written The Fault In Our Stars, Looking For Alaska and many others. The Fault In Our Stars debuted at number one The New York Times Best Seller list in January 2012, while Looking For Alaska won him the 2006 Printz Award. This information would naturally lead you to believe that An Abundance of Katherines would be just as great, right? Wrong.


Colin Singleton, again, is only interested in Katherines. He believes that all the Katherines are ‘dumpers’ and Colin is a ‘dumpee’. After Katherine XIX, or 19, he decides that he can predict future relationships. Colin is fixed on having a ‘Eureka’ moment, so, he creates the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Probability. This works by determining the future of any relationship based on the personalities of the two people. This theorem works for all but one, Katherine III. It doesn’t work for Katherine III because Colin dumped her! Colin was under the impression that every girl he dated dumped him, but he was wrong.


In my opinion, this book was very drawn out and somewhat boring. It was kind of confusing, as well. It was confusing for many reasons. For one, why did Colin have a crazy obsession with girls named Katherine? In one part of the book he even said that he turned down a date with a pretty girl that wasn’t a Katherine to just hang out with Katherine III. Also, I really didn’t understand why he had to anagram everything.

It was a confusing book with little to no plot. I did enjoy reading the book. It would have been better if John Green had thought a little more about the story line. Out of ten, I would rate it a 5 because, again, it had no plot.