The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I’m going to be honest. I am not a huge fan of thriller books. For as long as I can remember I’ve been absorbed by girly chick-flick like books, filled with romance and cheesy endings. However, being a college student who would like to have a future in writing, I thought it was only fitting to start expanding my reading list. Therefor, with much worry and unease, I picked up a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. 

I’m not joking in the slightest when I say that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is probably one of the most well written novels I’ve ever read, including required school readings. I was utterly flabbergasted at how beautifully Larsson weaved his words and sentences together to create this story full of emotions and surprising twists. I couldn’t help but wonder to myself if I’ve actually been stunting my own literature growth by sticking to only one genre, and after reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I’m certain. 

One of my favorite favorite things about Larsson is how he forms characters. By the end of the novel I felt that both Blomvist and Salander (the main characters in the novel) were my long lost friends. Blomvist being someone who seems very calm on the outside while wondering what the hell he was going to do on the inside, and Salander, being someone I would look up to with her daringness and confidence. I thought it was absolutely brilliant the way Larsson organized his chapters, intertwining both Blomvist and Salander’s lives until their lives actually became intertwined. 

While I thought the Journalism drama with the political magazine Millennium was interesting, it held no comparison to the drama of the murder mystery. I mean, I understand why it held a place in the novel, because it was the reason that Blomvist found himself with enough of time to go to some remote location and work on a murder mystery, but at the end of the novel, after the murder was solved and all was good in that category, the book still had about fifty or so pages left dedicated to finishing up the Journalism drama. It wasn’t as if the last fifty pages were completely boring, it was just that the end of the murder mystery was so interesting and intense, the last fifty pages didn’t stand a chance. 

If you’re looking for a novel to read in the new year, I would definitely recommend reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It’s full of adventure, surprising twists, a badass female, and well written words, that will surely all keep you on your toes. I honestly can’t wait to read the sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire.