He understands them so well that it’s scary.

One thing you can never say is that Green doesn’t understand teenagers. A bunch of loose threads were left untied and I kept thinking there was another chapter hidden later in the book. I also felt like a lot of the ending was missing. There were points from then on that were fun and that I thought were well written, but I was already soured to the book and it wasn’t a great way to start. When they were offered a job and a place to stay for the summer without much trouble, I cocked an eyebrow. Colin’s parents seemed to keep a close eye on him so when he was able to go off with no destination without much debate, my eyebrows went up.

I felt the whole premise of going on a road trip at the drop of a hat and staying with complete strangers was a bit too far-fetched. There were also parts that annoyed me a lot. There were parts of this book I really enjoyed. 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. 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. 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. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type happens to be girls named Katherine.

Other books by John Green reviewed on this blog:

An abundance of katherines goodreads