Katherine V thought boys were gross
Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun–but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

I really struggled with this one. It was kind of a snoozefest. A well-written snoozefest. But let me start with some positives. All of the characters seem to suffer some kind of emotional loss, which is hard for an author to write. John Green manages to write this well and with a lot of literary subtly. The chapters are short, the novel is short, and there is a fair bit of humour in the story to break up the mundane lives of the characters. Also, there’s a certain level of maths mentioned in this book, and it all seemed legit. And this is surprising, since it was all equations and formulas. It sounded like it worked perfectly, so kudos to John Green for that.

But there were many, many negatives. Firstly, the three books I’ve read so far of John Green’s (The Fault in our Stars and Looking for Alaska) ALL seem to have characters that are emotionally lost in life. It’s getting kind of boring, and this story really dragged. Colin and Hussan were supposed to go on a road trip, but the entire story is about their first stop. That’s not really a road trip. Also, the characters aren’t really relatable, and I found them quite boring. Lindsey is unrealistic, and so is the social dynamic between Colin and Hussan. The pace of this novel is too slow and the reader will constantly wonder where the novel is going.

I only recommend this novel to avid John Green fans.

My Score: 5/10
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