The Girl Who Played with Fire: Better Than the First

Written by deborah.woehr on February 17, 2010 - 0 Comments
Categories: Books, Fiction, Novels, book reviews

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If you haven’t read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yet, don’t worry. Larsson gives the reader good, short summaries of what happened to Salander and Blomkvist in this sequel. That said, I recommend that you read Tattoo first so that you can get a better idea of who these characters are so that you know why their lives are interconnected the way they are.

Unlike Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire starts off with a great hook. Then it bogs a bit when Salander is on the beach, studying mathematical equations while watching a couple who is obviously having marital problems. If you read Tattoo, then you’ll know that Salander has a big problem with abusive men. We don’t find out why until her story begins to unfold after she is accused of three murders.

Once Blomkvist finds the bodies of his journalists in their apartment, the pace picks up and doesn’t stop. At this point, you have to pay attention because Larsson used several POVs to tell this story. I had to flip back a couple of pages more than once because I lost track of who was doing the narrating, if the “voice” of the character wasn’t obvious.

I’m not sure which characters I enjoyed more, Lisbeth Salander or her arch enemies. Larsson did an excellent job depicting them. You’ll find plenty of mystery, corruption, bloodshed and murder between the pages of this book. You’ll also find out more about Lisbeth Salander, as well as the shocking secrets about her life that even she didn’t know about until she started researching a seemingly unknown criminal named Zala. The last chapter was the most riveting I’ve read in a long time, although I felt that some aspects were a bit unrealistic. That doesn’t matter, though. I’m hooked on Stieg Larsson’s stories and plan on reading his last book when it becomes available in May.

If you enjoy crime fiction with a cultural twist, read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo so that you can fully understand the references and the relationship between Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Then read this book.

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