The Girl Who Kicked the Honet's Nest

The third and final in the Lisbeth Salander series. Boy did I love the first book in this series. Then I think I read the second one shortly after it came out, which was also shortly before I went into labor with my daughter. Which means that it's been almost a year since I read it. For those of you who haven't read this series (are there any of you?) you know that these books are complicated. And have many characters. With foreign, hard to remember names that all sound similar with their crazy umlauts and gasa-stanla-stradas. So when The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest starts off with a bang and very little recap, I was all, "Wha?"

Eventually I caught on and fell back into the groove, but I will say that the language that gave me a slight rash in the second book shifted into full gear in this book. The conversation style is just so unrealistic! I suppose something has been lost in the translation from Swedish, but it's not just the dialogue, the whole book feels a bit bullet-pointish to me. It's all, "She puts on her shoes and leaves the house. It is 4:18pm. She is wearing black slacks and a light blue sweater." And I'm all, "That's all you've got for me?" In my opinion, the beauty of these books definitely lies in the story, not the writing. And the story sucks me in EVERY TIME. I don't even know if I like any of the characters, but I can't stop reading. Oh and I'm totally going to see the movie.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Loved it. I know there’s a lot of hype, and I caught on a little late, but when I was at Barnes and Noble buying a gift recently, there was a big table covered in this book right next to where I was waiting in line. I’d heard so many good things about it. And all I had to do was reach my hand out and… well, the rest is obvious. I bought it. And read it in like 3 days, despite it being a chunky monkey. It’s sort of an international thriller meets murder mystery - like Bourne Identity meets The Likeness, in Sweden.

I think some of the hype surrounding this book is based on the fact that the author died shortly after submitting the manuscripts for this book (and thankfully - its two sequels). Mystery surrounding mystery!

Anyways. The book is about so many things that I’m not really sure where to start. There’s the financial journalist Mikael who’s just been sentenced to 3 months in prison for libel after being tricked by a crooked financial leader about a story, and there’s Lisbeth - the tiny, spiky private investigator with man-issues. You follow their separate stories and then watch as the book brings them together to investigate the disappearance of a 16 year old girl who vanished in 1966. Somehow it (mostly) all comes together and while there were a few times where I was all, “What just happened?”, like a lot of thrillers, it either doesn’t matter that much, or things start to make sense a little bit further in.

For me, this was the type of book where I brought it to work to read during lunch, but really wanted to just shut my office door and read it all day. I didn’t necessarily feel totally satisfied at the end of the book, but they’re clearly winding you up to go right out and buy the next book in the series – The Girl that Plays with Fire, which they ensured by publishing the first chapter of it in the back of this book. So now of course I’ve read the first 10 pages of the next book and must have it. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to have a baby in like, oh ANY DAY NOW and have about a bajillion other things I should be doing, but I think instead I will buy The Girl that Plays with Fire and start it immediately.