My review of “The girl who played with fire”

The 2nd book in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, “The girl who played with fire” comes in at spot 12 for my “26 in 52 Challenge“. Every time I write one of these posts, I go ‘oh I’m so behind’ etc, and this one will continue that trend. It’s been taking longer to read books of late; though in my defense these two come in at over 700 each, and I’m a notoriously slow reader. Anyway, moving on…

As Lisbeth Salander’s life begins to move to better things, she gets accused of three homicides and there’s damning evidence which makes her the prime suspect. Two of the three murders are colleagues of Mikael Blomqvist, conveniently enough. He doesn’t believe Salander is guilty and tries everything he can to prove her innocence. Unfortunately for him, she hates him and doesn’t do much in the way of help, until later on. So the story continues on as we follow Blomqvist and Salander as they try to uncover the mystery of who shot those three people. They don’t appear together until the end of the book, but they follow parallel paths to figure things out.

I found this one a bit slower than the first, but still quite enjoyable. What I enjoyed most, was learning the background of Salander. Finding out what made her who she is only made her character seem that much more interesting. She seems like the underdog who can’t catch a break in life, so though she’s crass, you want to cheer for her, every step of the way.

The story line seemed a bit over-planned to me. Where the first book felt like the series of events that happened were natural, this seemed like every character that was introduced was just a convenient plant for a plot twist. I know that may sound weird to say because all books are planned, but that’s just how it feels for me.

While I have a few issues with the book, I give this one a 4 out of 5.

Have you read it yet? Thoughts? Here’s the trailer: