The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Review

**Keep in mind that the picture is from the remake of the movie and is not my photo.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

When I originally came along this book, my grandmother was recommending it me. At the time, I was just slowing down on my reading and it was one of the books that I couldn’t seem to get into. It wasn’t that long after this book was recommended to me, that I stopped reading altogether. Years later, when I finally started getting into it again, I found a copy of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo at a thrift store. I decided to buy the $1 copy and brought it home, full of expectations. It sat on my bookshelf for a couple of weeks, until after I started going through a couple of books that I managed to finish AND enjoy and decided to finally start reading it.

I don’t think I ever read what the book was about before I started and so I had no background to the story. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I certainly did not regret the choice. As soon as I started this book – I couldn’t put it down! The story got me hooked after the first couple of pages. I quickly became invested in Blomkvist and the Wennerström story that he kept messing up due to not checking every source. He wanted so badly to get the story right and to finally reveal him for the bad guy he was and he failed. Soon after, when the Vanger’s popped up, I became hooked on finding out what happened to Harriet! Why had she disappeared? Where was her body? Was she actually dead? Had she run away? What was going on that someone wasn’t saying? And will Blomkvist finally figure out this 30-year-old mystery?

Then came Lisbeth Salander. She reminded me a lot of… me! I wondered what happened to her to make her so quiet and so reserved. There had to be something more  than what she was giving up. I couldn’t believe that there was practically no one on her side! So many people were, not only trying to control her, but take advantage of her. I felt so bad for what she had to endure. Bjurman was supposed to have been helping her and instead he had done horrible things to her. Those scenes with him in them – they were the hardest to read out of the whole book. I was angry at Bjurman for what he had done and I was upset for Salander and what she had endured. But I was on the edge of my seat and rooting for Salander when she came and got her revenge! She was kick-ass! She was brave and powerful, and I loved every bit of it! Her story pulled me in even further into the book and I became absolutely invested.

I had to know what happened to Harriet, how Blomkvist was going to restore his reputation and get the story of a lifetime with Wennerström and was Salander going to do something about Bjurman and her freedom?

The ending was definitely not what I had expected and threw me through a very good loop! It tied in very well and explained many things – except anything about Salander. I’m hoping that the next book in the series will explain further. There was not much background on her in this book, but there was quite a lot of character development for her. I really got to know Salander as she was, not just her history. Although, I did not expect her to have the “balls” that she did. Which, I think, was what made her that much better of a person.

The story was originally written in Swedish and translated to English later. There was a few errors with the writing due to the translation – I expected that. English isn’t a very easy language to learn or translate in the first place – it is a combination of so many other languages. The errors weren’t difficult to understand, however, and I only had to pause a few times throughout the book to figure out what was trying to be said, but other than that, I had a pretty easy time with it.

Overall, this book was amazing from start to finish and captivated me from the beginning. With a few chapters here and there with a tad bit too much information, it was a pretty easy read. It was well worth the 700+/- pages and I would highly recommend to anyone. I was glad to hear that there was several more books into the series and couldn’t wait to read more about Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. I’m also very interested in seeing how David Lagercrantz is going to make a continuation of the series and how well it fits into the original. I haven’t heard good reviews of it so far.