I’ll be honest, it took me most of the book to properly get
into the story - I was probably on page 150 (of 215) and that’s when I found
that I didn’t want to leave the story! I love John Green’s voice, his characters,
his sense of story and how he seems to know the best way a story should be
told, but it was a little hard to follow for one specific reason: the
interruptions. Let me explain - the premise of the story is that the main
character, Colin, has only dated girls whose name is Katherine. He has just
graduated from high school and has recently been dumped by Katherine XIX. To
get some space and to try and get over her, he and his friend Hassan take off
on a road trip and end up in Tennessee, where they befriend a girl named
Lindsey, and her mother, Hollis, who offers them a job if they just stick
around for a few weeks during their summer break. Colin is a bit of a prodigy,
stuck in the idea that he has failed (in that he hasn’t met his parents’ crazy expectations
that he do things like memorize 25 Latin verb conjugations a day, etc.) and he
embarks on developing a mathematical formula that predicts the length of a relationship
depending on all kinds of variables. Interspersed between the boys’ story in
Tennessee is the history of Colin’s relationships with the Katherines (which
vary from camp flings, to elementary school hand-holding, to full-blown nearly
year-long relationships), and to be honest, the interruption was hard to get
used to (because they’re, well, interruptions.) That said, I enjoyed the story
itself, thought the characters were well-developed, the voices of the main
characters distinct (which was important, because I’ve noticed that John Green
tends to leave off the he said/she saids a lot!)
Likelihood I’ll read it again: 25% (Once seems to have done it well for me, but who knows?)
Likelihood I’ll recommend it to others: 30%
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Page count: 471
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