Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I’d been interested in checking it out for some time now, and I finally had the chance to read it. I quite enjoyed it.

So, the story is about this guy, who’s a journalist. He gets convicted of libel. And then he gets offered a job to write a book about a very prominent family, while secretly trying to solve a murder mystery. It’s also about this tiny tattoo covered girl, who’s a private investigate and hacker, emotionally damaged and may or may not have asperger’s syndrome.

  I love a good mystery. I’m also usually pretty good at figuring them out. I remember watching The Sixth Sense for the first time with a friend who had already seen it. We were sitting in her basement. About half way through I made a statement about the outcome of the movie, to which she replied, “How could you possibly know that already?” I thought it was quite obvious. I’m not saying I’m never surprised and that I always know everything about everything, just I’m pretty good at figuring things out, is all. While reading this book, I had two main theories, and was certain that one of them was correct. Either/Or. Definitely one or the other. I’ll tell you, I was surprised. The outcome was an option that I knew was an option, but I never in a million years would have thought it was a real possible outcome for the story. I was impressed.

The story is very dark. There were some very uncomfortable, horrific situations in it - torture, sexual abuse - it’s not for everyone. Also, they killed my favorite character. No spoilers, but I will say that fire and torture were a factor, and they left her head on the motorcycle seat.

There was a lot of talk of food in the book. Mostly sandwiches. There were so many sandwich references that at one point I had to stop reading and go fix one for myself. This, I suppose, says a lot more about me then the book. One other food mention sticks out in my mind: bacon pancakes with lingonberries. I don’t know exactly what such a thing would taste like, but I suspect it would be incredible.

The descriptions of things and people are fantastic. My favorite was of the first sighting of Isabella Vanear: “She looked like an aging vampire---still strikingly beautiful but as venomous as a snake.” There was a lot of name dropping product descriptions - something that normally drives me crazy, but it didn’t even seem out of place. It’s something has the ability to ruin a perfectly enjoyable book for me, if done wrong.

On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful, I would give it an Almost Awesome. I absolutely enjoyed it.  I will be reading the other two books in the series, that is for sure. I also can not wait for the movie.