An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

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 quite enjoyed this. It was rather light entertainment but it was fun and novel. The ending is fairly predictable, but the characters were entertaining ... especially Hassan. I think the novelty value of this book was also increased greatly by the fact that I finally figured out how to get back to my spot after skipping to a foot note on my Kindle. And there are many ... I really don't think I'm the footnote sort in general tho.

I did find it constantly jarring tho to read a book that uses the term kafir so repeatedly. But not in the way we in South Africa have heard it (extremely derogatory), rather in the way Trevor Noah explained it, in it's original form, by an Arab, meaning "unbeliever". Still, based on my country's history, it felt funny in my head every time I read it.

From the reviews on Good Reads tho, it really sounds like I should read Looking for Alaska instead (everyone who've read both seem fairly disappointed in this after reading that). But, now that I've read the blurb for that, it honestly doesn't really appeal. Oh well.