Stieg Larsson

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist and hacker Lisbeth Salander investigate the disappearance of Harriet Vanger which took place forty years ago.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

C Fernando Maciel 

Very intricate plot. The story really gets the reader's atention.

I enjoyed a lot being with the Millenium Trilogy.

André Silva

Really enjoyed it. Keeps my thesis that nordic writers write very good crime books.

Geoffrey Froggatt

Trigger warnings for graphic depictions of sexual assault and animal abuse. The beginning of this book was very slow and it was hard for me to visualize some parts of the story properly. It also took a while for the story to really take off. The writing reminds me of Stephen King in the way that every character’s background is explained in length. I didn’t like waiting 57% of the story for Mikael and Lisbeth to meet but that’s just a personal preference. The ending after the stinger was also very slow. The titular character Lisbeth was my favorite part of the novel but I felt there wasn’t enough time spent with her.

Briar's Reviews

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was fantastic and I can't wait to get my hand on the next novel!

This book is an excellent mystery/thriller novel that kept me on my toes. At first I found it to be very slow and boring, but once I got about 1/5 of the way into it, I loved it! It was fantastic and exciting! Stieg Larsson is an incredible writer and I envy his writing skill and attention to detail! 

When I got to the end, the finale fit perfectly into place and made sense. And for once I did not see the ending coming! 

Five out of five stars!!

Sergei Khudovekov

Anyaconda

Caitlin Hooker

Starts out very slow but is worth it. My persective was different than most because one of the characters has Aspergers and so does Rachel, but it is a compelling mystery that I coudn't figure out.

Juliana Matias

So I first read this book almost exactly 10 years ago. And I LOVED it. I binged the entire series in under a week while lounging on the beach on holiday. And once I got home, I proceeded to try and convince the entire world and their mothers to read it too. This was a 5-star read for 20-something me if ever there was one.

So when this book was chosen as this month’s buddy read in a server I particularly enjoy, I was both excited and apprehensive. I mean, I was really looking forward to reading something I love, but at the same time, I am not the same reader I was 10 years ago, and I remembered this book having a lot of tropes I really don’t enjoy anymore.

So I am starting this review with a big trigger-warning: this book deals with rape. I won’t go into major spoilers, because I don’t want to ruin your experience, and this book is definitely worth reading. But please be aware that the original Swedish title of this book translates to “Men who hate women”, and that this is a far more accurate title than the English translation. This book deals with sexual assault, and it is not done subtly; it is massively descriptive, and although it is not trivialised, you shouldn’t go into it blind if that is a subject you are not comfortable with.

So on with my review.

Some things I really enjoyed:

1. The pacing of the book: even though I had read this before, this book never failed to keep me on my toes. There was always something happening, and the chain of events kept it fresh and interesting even throughout the info dump at the start. Two of the main characters don’t even meet until the middle of the book, and it is wonderfully satisfying.

2. The financial intrigue: maybe it’s because I’m an accountant (and a huge nerd) and find these things fascinating, but the main character is a financial reporter, and we get so much background on the Swedish market that I can only imagine it’s a treat if you get all the references.

3. The mystery: the author keeps us on our toes throughout the entire book. We want to solve the mystery along with the characters. And what a mystery it is. There are so many layers and so many unexpected turns, and it goes deeper and deeper than you could ever guess when you first started reading.

4. The ending: you should be prepared that this book’s climax happens, and then you notice that there is still a good 120 pages left to go. This time is divided between closure, a wrapping up of loose threads and what I can only imagine is the next book’s set up. Don’t get me wrong; this book works perfectly as a standalone, but there is setup. And I just loved spending that denouement time with one of the characters in particular. What can I say? They rock socks.

Some things I did not love:

1. You can tell a straight man wrote this book. I mean, it’s not completely off-putting or anything, but sometimes things are unnecessarily sexualised. And maybe it’s on purpose after all this is a book about men who hate women, but 99% of male characters in this book are creeps. Maybe all of them, at least to a certain degree. And there is this one instance when Lisbeth Salander refers to another female character is her mind as a “slut”, which is completely out of character, but that might be the translator’s fault, I’ll never know.

2. Still connected to the point above, the main character ends up sleeping with every woman he meets for some reason. I mean, it’s just not realistic, and most times it adds absolutely nothing to the story. I don’t know; I am always a fan of mysteries and thrillers without any romance.

3. I didn’t love reading the crude depictions of sexual assault, but they are an integral part of the story, so I guess I can’t exactly complain. You know, it’s just not fun.

All in all, I have to say this holds up well. I have rated it 4-stars now, so not quite as good as last time I read it, but still a solid, great book. Give it a chance.

There are also not one, but 2 movie adaptations to this novel. A Swedish one from 2009, and an American one from 2011. They are both good. The Swedish one is better.

Kayla Ndife

This thing starts off a little slow. Then you get about 100 or so pages into it, and it really picks up. I read the last 300+ pages in one night, and couldn't put the damn thing down until 3am.

This is the story of an investigative journalist who, we can only assume, got suckered into publishing a false story about a guy. Apparently in Sweden, you get jail time for this, so his career is in the crapper (sort of) and he has to go to prison for three months (apparently in Sweden also, you get to decide when it is that you serve your jailtime. Weird.). 
While he's trying to figure out what to do, he is approached by an eccentric but loveable octogenarian who wants him to solve a sort of "locked-room" mystery that resulted in what he thinks was the murder of his favorite relative. The journalist gets caught up in this against his will, and teams up with a twenty-something social outcast (who is the "girl" the title alludes to) to figure out what it is that happened.

The story gets pretty weird at some times, and there's a lot of financial jargon and stuff in there that you can more or less skip over. Also, it gets pretty graphic in parts, in more ways than one, but overall this was an excellent read. I've definitely picking up the next book (this is the first of three) here this coming week.