Brief synopsis: Mikael Blomkvist is a well-known investigative journalist. But there's an issue - he's been sued for libel and he's out of his regular gig. Just in time, Henrik Vanger of one of Sweden's wealthiest families, wants Blomkvist to spend a year searching for insight into the death of his niece, who disappeared almost 50 years ago. Later, Blomkvist is joined by Lisbeth Salander, a young prodigy investigator. Together, they uncover secrets years old.



I was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for weeks. It's become such a classic, and probably the best known Nordic noir novel that exists. I've owned it for a few years, but it's fairly thick, so I always put off reading it. I finally got around to it this year to mark off the Nordic Noir prompt for the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge, and geez, I kind of see why it took me so long to finally pick it up.

It's a good book and an interesting story - don't get me wrong. It just took getting through half the book before it really got intriguing. The weirdest thing to me is that Lisbeth Salander (the actual girl with the dragon tattoo) doesn't really become an integral character until much, much later in the book than expected, and realistically, I don't feel like I ever really got to know her character very well. For a character to have the book named after her and the series to supposedly revolve around that character, it was incredibly odd to me that she wasn't really the main character - instead you get to know much more about Mikael Blomkvist, who is the character that the novel actually follows.

The novel was incredibly dark and disturbing and not at all for the faint-of-heart. There were actually parts that made me feel sick to stomach, which again, was unexpected for this book I've heard so much about.

I will say the story ended up having a pretty great storyline, but the beginning was boring and slow. There were way too many characters, with lots of similar names nonetheless, and parts were underwhelming at time. Now that I've gotten to know the characters a bit better, there's a possibility I would read more of the books, but most likely I'll never read more in the Millenium series.