Books and Reading

Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The other night I got into bed at midnight with the intent of reading only a chapter or two of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson before falling asleep. The book has been very slow-moving for me, and it took forever to trudge through the first hundred pages or so. Gradually it became more and more interesting, and by the time I was about two-thirds of the way through, I was hooked. Still, it was not what I’d call “easy reading” especially since I’ve been reading mostly fluffy vampire books for the past couple years.

Well, I made it a little more than halfway by last night and something just clicked. I was unable to put the book down! Laying in bed reading with my husband sleeping beside me and my baby sleeping in his room, I had complete and utter peace in which I could read my book, and it was almost like time stood still.

Before I knew it, the clock read 2:15 and I was nearly finished with the book! I couldn’t stop then. I was tired but felt a surge of adrenaline as I was so close to finding out what was going to happen in the end.

It took me two and a half months to read the first half of this book, and only two and a half hours to read the final half! What a crazy story, what interesting, unique, and compelling characters. There are so many dimensions to this story, so many twists… the day after finishing the book, I’m still thinking about it.

I didn’t really start to enjoy this book until I was about 150 pages into the story, but I had so many friends recommend it to me, that I felt I needed to continue. I didn’t want to quit! Plus, my mom bought me all three books in the series, and I would have been disappointed not to read them.

I’m so glad I persevered through reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, & ended up loving the story. I don’t know if it’s a book that I could ever read again, but I wholeheartedly recommend that you do read it, just to say that you did — and just to get to know the incredible character of Lisbeth Salander, who will undoubtedly go down as a true heroine in this era of modern fiction.

Looking forward to reading the final two books in the series. I do hope, though, that they move a bit quicker along in the beginning than the first!

3 thoughts on “Book Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

  1. I was curious to see what you’d think! Most of my reader friends LOVED this series. I also thought the first 150 pages were terribly slow, and thought the rest of the book was pretty good. The next one is better. The third one, however, was like torture for me. I couldn’t finish it. I just thought this series was over-hyped in general. Are you going to pick up “The Girl Who Played With Fire” next?

  2. It is a great book! And I fully agree it took me 100+ pages to read but it was so worth it in the end. The other books move at a much better pace since there is less set up that needs to be told.

    Check out the movies on Netflix, they are on instant and are really good. Not as good as the book {of course!} but certainly worth the watch 🙂

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