Book Club Friday: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

From Amazon.com:
"A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves."

I have to say, it took me several months to get through this book. I tried twice before I got past the first 150 pages. It was definitely hard to keep my interest with all of the names and characters being thrown at me in the beginning- I had a really hard time getting through the first half of the book. However, once I did, the second half was a breeze. Without giving the whole book away- I was enthralled. I kept trying to guess "who dun it"- and I'm not really into mystery books. The ending was a completely twist! And I can't believe that Daniel Craig is going to play Blomvkist in the movie coming out this December! Though I thought the girl had blonde hair, or at least that's how I always pictured her in my head. And now I have to read the rest of the series to know what happens next. I've never really been into series either, but what can I say- I wanna know!

I think the physical relationship between Blomvkist and Lisbeth kept me more intrigued than the case of Harriet and the financial mumbo jumbo (which again, I found hard to understand, though necessary to the storyline). I was also drawn to Lisbeth- I want to know more about her personal life. We got a sneak peek of the turmoil she went through growing up, but we never got the whole picture. I want to know why she is so damaged, and why she's so pissed off at men. (The tattoo she gave her "guardian" was insane!! But it definitely fit the crime.)

Link up below!