Book Review: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Back story first.  I saw the Swedish films about this book, and the two that follow, last spring sometime.  I thought about buying the books and didn't.  Houston's friend Sam bought the first book and was unimpressed. (He didn't get far enough into the book)  Anyway, so he gave it to me.  I was slightly afraid to read it because it has some explicit content and I wasn't sure I how the author would describe those parts.  You've read this name many times but about a week and a half ago my friend Brynn asked if I wanted to read it and join her at the book club she goes to, to discuss it.  Lucky for me, I already had the book lying around.  Anyway, onto the actual book review...

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It's a great book if you like mystery novels.  In a nut shell, it's about a journalist who is hired to write a book about the Vanger family, who happen to be owners of an industrial corporation, and to also  attempt to solve an old family mystery.  There was really no hope of solving the mystery, but he was asked to try anyway.  The other part of the story is about Lisbeth.  She is an introverted outcast who is insanely smart and who's profession is to do background checks for a company called Milton Security, but I would think it should be more properly called "digging up dirt" on people.  The beginning of the book is jumps back and forth between the two stories and eventually converge.

All I can say is once you get into it you really can't put it down!  The only downfall of this book is that because it's the first book of three there is A LOT of back story at the beginning about all the characters, as well as some other no namer's that we didn't really need to know about.  That's the hang up.  If you can get through all the "getting to know you" part at the beginning you will be pleasantly surprised at how hooked you will get.

As for the explicit content.  This book deals with some very tough issues.  So, if you are not okay with reading about crimes against women, then don't bother reading it.  I was very afraid, going into it that those sections of the book would be pages long and very descriptive.  (Had that been the case, I would have skipped over those sections entirely) Thankfully it was VERY brief, and as appropriate as it could be. I was very impressed by that.

Now that I think about it, all the back story will most likely come in handy in the next two books.  I have seen the movie, so I sort of already have a cheat sheet in my brain.  I can't remember too much about them, but it all comes flooding back when I read.  I will most likely read the next two books soon enough.  

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That was probably the worst book review ever written, but I didn't want to give too much away if you do consider reading it.

Anyway, now it's onto Watership Down.  There's a story behind that book too.

Until then....