Name: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Rating: 4.013261296660118 (1018 reviews)
ISBN: 9781401235581

Stieg Larsson

Denise Mina

Leonardo Manco

Andrea Mutti

Mikael and Lisbeth try to dig up the truth as the darkness of the Vanger family threatens to engulf the both of them in this graphic novel adaptation of the novel.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a striking novel. Just when I was thinking there wasn't anything new on the horizon, along comes Stieg Larsson with this wonderfully unique story. I was completely absorbed.” —Michael Connelly "I doubt you will read a better book this year.” —Val McDermid Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family. There was no corpse, no witnesses, no evidence. But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone from her own deeply dysfunctional family. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired to investigate, but he quickly finds himself in over his head. He hires a competent assistant: the gifted and conscience-free computer specialist Lisbeth Salander, and the two unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.

Book One Of The Millennium Trilogy

The main “problem” of this book is mystery in a mystery - beginning and final 50-70 pages were a bit slow. But style and mystery itself is great, already knew whole plot but still enjoyed 👍🏻

Mariia

Hated it. Written with zero emotions. Could not connect or understand any of the characters. 

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

There is just too much information in this book that isn’t needed. The plot doesn’t progress until about 60% in and then it’s interesting. Lisbeth isn’t even really a main character but rest of the series probably explains that however, I will not be continuing this series. 

Summerlyn Grainger

i bought a mass market paperback copy of this book when i was in high school, 12 years ago. i finally decided to start (and finish) it with the help of an audiobook lmao

🌟

Who doesn't love the dysfunctional-family-with-secrets trope? This book was entertaining, but verrrrryyy drawn out. Definitely took a fat minute for me to get into (and out of) since who actually cares about financial scandals? Also, I feel like every time there was a huge change of events, it immediately went back to being slow. My complaining makes it seem like I didn't like the book, but I really did. So: On the bright side, Larsson did a great job at making you care about the two main characters, which always makes a book better in my opinion. I also really enjoyed how complex the main mystery was- it felt like a criminal minds episode on crack. Overall, great, interesting mystery/thriller.

Jillian Roberts

Margo Koss

Luke Harkness

An epic!

Reading this book I often felt that too much description was being given to every single situation and thought at the time that I was going to write something along the lines of "some books are long because they describe everything in such detail, not because a lot actually happens in them. This is one of those books." And a little bit of me feels like that with this book. But then in hind sight, this book tells two incredible stories. Theres a murder mystery embroiled in family drama whilst supporting a financial investigation. It's truly a great book.

Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate.

Sarah Sammis

Back in May when I was working for the Census I heard a book review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Lasson on NPR. It was an especially hot day and I decided to take a little extra time to fill out my paperwork and rehydrate so I could hear the entire review. The Millenium series wasn't one I had planned to read but Maureen Corrigan made it sound interesting and like something I might like.

So I put The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on hold at the library. There were something like a hundred people in line ahead of me. I put the book out of my mind having plenty of others things to read and of course the daily Census work to keep me occupied. Near the very end of my run as a 2010 enumerator, the book came in. And I ended up reading it while waiting for a mandatory Census meeting to start, two hours late! Let's just say it didn't put me in a good mood to read the book.

Going into the book I certainly was well aware of what has been posted already about the book. There are those who love the book and rave about how they couldn't put it down. There are others who hate the book for the violence against women. I certainly didn't love the book and I certainly didn't hate the book either. If anything, I found it a mediocre psychological drama mystery in need of editing.

Lisbeth Salander is the girl with the dragon tattoo and she's one of two people investigating the forty year old disappearance of Harriet Vanger. She went missing during a family gathering on a remote island at a time when the bridge was blocked by a truck accident. Henrik Vanger, her uncle wants Mikael Blomkvist to research her disappearance with hopes of discovering what happened to her and who has been trying to drive him mad by sending yearly reminders of her disappearance.

As many blog reviews have said, the first 50 pages are deadly slow. Even the ones who love the book admit that it has a slow start. By the time I was stuck in a McDonalds waiting for the meeting to start I was past those fifty pages. I was hopeful that things would pick up and capture my attention. For me, they didn't. In fact by about page 120 or so I figured out what had happened to Harriet. After that, I kept reading only because I had nothing else to do.

The big draw for most readers seems to be how different Blomkvist and Salander are. Blomkvist is dull, boring, and doesn't know how to tell any of the other characters to shut up. Which leaves me slogging through paragraphs and paragraphs of dialogue in place of plot or character development.

Then there's Salander, the "kick ass" titular character in the English translation. The original title is Men Who Hate Women which is a better title. Salander comes off as a throw away character. Sure, she has a painful past and tons of secrets and an attitude but in the grand scheme of the libel suit, the disappearance of a young girl, a seriously dysfunctional family and a plot that seems like the miniseries version of a typical night of Criminal Minds, she's like that show's Penelope Garcia.

So no, I won't be bothering with the other two books in the series. I might watch the Swedish film on Netflix but I won't be forking out money to see the American remake that's currently being filmed.

Melanie Knight

It took me a while to get into, but by about quarter of the way through I was intrigued and finished the rest of the book in a few days. I did skim over some of the longer business/financial parts and focused on the stories about Harriet and Salander, which I found much more interesting.

Such a captivating and thrilling read! There are a lot of dark themes throughout the book and Larsson manages to approach them in such an interesting way. The book deals with a wonderfully intricate plot about past and present murders which inevitably intertwine. The characters are all unique and complex and so fleshed out that you are instantly drawn into the story and feel like you are experiencing everything along with them. A great novel and I can't wait to continue with the rest of the series. 
Also, the original Swedish title is 'Men who hate women' which is actually such an accurate title. I like it more than the English one.

Colleen

3 Stars

This review contains some spoilers.
 
I heard all the fuss back when this came out, but it sounded too dark and graphic. It didn’t help that people were mostly talking about the rape and physical abuse in the book more than anything else about it. So even though several people recommended it to me, I passed on reading it at the time. I’m not sure what exactly made me reconsider now, but I finally read it.

The story has a very slow start, but it is intriguing. The author quickly weaves a complicated web of trickery, manipulation, and betrayal. The main characters are Mikael, a reporter who tried to take down a rich, powerful man but botched it and ended up sued for libel, and Lisbeth, a hacker with a dubious past who is implied to be on the spectrum. There are two separate plot lines. The first is Mikael’s investigation into the man he was trying to expose. The second is the forty-year-old case of the disappearance of Harriet Vanger which Mikael is hired to investigate. The two plot lines are only feebly connected by Mikael’s involvement in both. And at times it felt like two different stories mashed into one.

I wonder how much of this disconnection is due to the translation. I have heard that the English version does have notable changes from the original text. So I don’t know for sure whether I am critiquing the author or the translator.

All of the characters were morally grey to say the least. I know that is a hallmark of Nordic Noir, but I prefer characters to have more complexity and motivation for why they are the way they are. While many details are given about the characters’ backgrounds, at times it felt more like an encyclopedic listing rather than depth of character. They always felt hollow to me which made it difficult to move past a surface level of interest. I was engaged enough in the story, but truthfully did not care for the characters. I think my expectations of Lisbeth in particular were too high going into this book. I have heard so many people say how awesome she is, but I found her character disappointing. 

The story raises questions about crimes against women. I mentioned that there is rape in the story, but I should reiterate a trigger warning for rape, physical and psychological abuse, torture, incest, and murder. And some of it is described in graphic detail and presented almost as if sexual assault is an unavoidable part of life. The book does include some statistics about abuse. And it touches on the awful grey area of what is the best outcome for victims of abuse. Sadly, the world puts a lot of blame onto victims. Even when they are not overtly blamed for what happened to them, seeking legal justice involves baring their lives to the public, reliving the crime, and not having a guarantee that any justice will be served. Which leads the story to vigilante justice and disregard for the law. Maybe it was just me, but the thread of don’t trust the law and take matters into your own hands seemed so strong in this book both in the plot and in the characters’ attitudes and actions. It was pessimistic boarding on nihilistic. 

Where I really started to roll my eyes: (view spoiler)[I literally thought “at least Lisbeth isn’t sleeping with Mikael, because that would be nauseatingly clichéd!” Of course, a scant few pages later they started humping like rabbits. It was an absolutely clichéd sexual relationship with a man twice her age who sleeps with everything female. (hide spoiler)]

Unfortunately, the ending took as long to wrap up as it did to set up. While the long intro was interesting and kept me engaged, the overly protracted conclusions lost my interest especially since the two separate plot lines had two separate drawn-out endings. And even though there were some exciting elements in the endings, they dragged on and on until they eventually sputtered out into an anticlimactic cessation. 

The story kept me engaged well enough overall, but I’m not in any hurry to read the rest of the series. In fact, I doubt I will continue with it at all. It is a satisfactory enough story though - if you like your mysteries with a side of pessimism and slathered in bleakness.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 2 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 3 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars

Zachary Roberts

Deborah Kerr

Arturo Hernández

Even though the first chapters are a bit slow, the novel gets the pacing right after that (the Vanger story is quite messed up) and leaves you wanting to understand more about the past of Lisbeth (and her motives). Definitely will be reading other installments of this series.

edith w.

I tried (twice) to read this heap of rubbish, but I couldn't do it. It just didn't make any sense, the story jumped around from one unsympathetic character to another, and 70 pages in (when I realised I'd been skim-reading for the previous 20), I gave up. 

It's now helping to hold up a broken shelf in a bookcase, so at least it's useful for something.

Haylie

The book started off sort of dull with Blomkvist and his troubles but I kept reading because I wanted to see what happened and what all the hype was about. The book didn't truly get good until Lisbeth Salander became part of the plot. Sometimes the book can drag on with some of Blomkvist's story but it's Salander's story that made me want to keep going. When these two characters finally met and started working together, then I flew through the book, engrossed in their story. All in all, the book does live up to the hype. It's written with excellence and I'm definitely going to keep reading the trilogy.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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