The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) in CPL's Book a Week Challenge

May 18, 2012 Sunny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nook

There is a conflict between what I selected for 'my rating' and what I'm about to write under this 'what did you think?' section. That's because there are so many little things I COULD pick on, but at the end of the book, I was still left feeling good about having read it. Whenever I run into this issue, I find it best to resort to my favorite review style - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good:
*This book becomes a serious page-turner about half-way through. Once you get past the ridiculous There is a conflict between what I selected for 'my rating' and what I'm about to write under this 'what did you think?' section. That's because there are so many little things I COULD pick on, but at the end of the book, I was still left feeling good about having read it. Whenever I run into this issue, I find it best to resort to my favorite review style - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good:
*This book becomes a serious page-turner about half-way through. Once you get past the ridiculous amount of information that Larsson feels compelled to share about every character - well, it gets pretty exciting. I mean, I just finished this book yesterday, and enjoyed it so much that I stopped on my way home to pick up the second book in this series from the library.
*Lisbeth Salander is holy cow, freaking awesome. I don't know what it is about angry, violent, computer-geek, anti-social chicks that make me immediately think - 'Yeah! Root for her!' - but there it is. Maybe it's because I wasn't a "bad" girl in my youth, but there are aspects of Lisbeth's personality that I would not be ashamed to emulate.
*I was left totally guessing up to the climactic whodunit explanation. I think I suspected each character at some point in the story.

The Bad:
*The first half of this book did not grab my attention. I actually started this book about two years ago, and didn't get past the prologue and first chapter before losing interest. This is my biggest gripe about the book - the only folks who know how great the story is are the ones who are willing to torture themselves with 200 pages of set-up.
*The title of this book tells you exactly zero about the story. Lisbeth (yes, she's the title character, of course) plays such a minor role in the first half of the book that I wonder why this title was picked. Maybe the title was intended as a red herring? Ah, well. It's a minor gripe.
*The writing was not as crisp as it could have been. It wasn't horrible - remember, I'm already preparing to read the next book in the series. But, it felt as if much of the information was superfluous and it took Larsson way to long to set up various scenes.

The Ugly:
Sexual assault, rape, child molestation. All of it. ...more

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