The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book review

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Series: Millennium #1
Published by Alfred A. Knopf Genres: Crime
Pages: 465
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A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.
It's about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden...and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.
It's about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance...and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age, who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism, and an unexpected connection between themselves.(front flap)

I cannot remember the last time I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but I always remember that I enjoyed it. I’m not saying that’s necessarily changed but I do think this wasn’t as great as I thought it was going to be. I loved all the different strands of the story and I definitely think they make a brilliant story but there was SO much within this plot and sometimes it DRAGGED a lot and I was waiting for something, anything to happen. I do still think that in terms of a crime novel this one is a solid match and there is a really good sense of intrigue running all the way through this book. I adored the characters and the setting, I have a fascination with Sweden as a country and I think this book offers a differing point of view than what is usually presented.

The main character in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is Mikael as he navigates the world of the Vanger corporation in search of a missing girl. I think as a character he is an interesting specimen but there are some problematic parts of his personality and I struggled with the way he looks at the world. I would have really loved for him to be someone I could root for but, the way he treats sex and women really rubbed me up the wrong way. Not necessarily the relationships but the way it was written and the smugness of the situation. The other main character is Lisbeth Salander a young woman who is deemed mentally incompetent but is actually a brilliant computer hacker and researcher and I loved her outlook on the world. She was the perfect opposition to Mikael’s attitude and sometimes boring monologue. I really loved learning more about her as a person and how she ended up where she was, plus it was great to read about her view on the world and how she justified her view points to everything.

I loved a lot about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but I think my favourite bits were definitely the moments where they were trying to figure out what had happened to Harriet. The process that they went through was intriguing and I really enjoyed watching them find new clues and eventually work out what was going on. It was also really interesting to see the use of analogue technology as well as digital and how they were both used during the investigation. I think it was one of the best build ups and reveals even though I already knew what was going on!

I really would have loved for this book to be a LOT shorter than it was. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was SO long and there was a lot of information that was definitely dragged out and could have been cut. There was a point where the story got to be tedious!

This is definitely a solid crime read, it has a great mystery and is also a different perspective because there isn’t a detective. I will definitely be rereading the next one in the series!

Have you read this one? What did you think? Let me know!