How 'Bout Them Reads: The Girl Who Played with Fire

This book follows The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and basically picks up where it left off. We are about a year down the line, but we learn about what happened during the past year since the last book left off.

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Lisbeth Salander has been traveling and living her life of luxury since "obtaining" her fortune. She's been doing a lot of maturing and growing up, but underneath she still has a lot of baggage and a lot of darkness inside of her. Mikael Blomkvist has been living his life, getting back to the normalcy of it all. He's back at Millennium magazine, where they are about to undertake an extensive sex trafficking operation. The two of them hadn't talked during the course of the year. Lisbeth was deeply hurt by Mikael and wanted nothing to do with him, even though he has tried contacting her throughout the course of the year. But their lives are about to take a crash-course into each other when Lisbeth discovers the story that Mikeal will be publishing in Millennium might be related to her path. Then suddenly two very important people to the Millennium's trafficking story are murdered, and nothing is clear.

Lisbeth is being accused for murdering these two people and Mikael is now on a mission to figure out if she is really guilty of the murders or if there is something deeper at play. While the police search for Lisbeth, Mikael begins looking into the men that were about to be named in the trafficking story to discover if one of them was actually behind the murders. He is convinced Lisbeth is innocent and that nothing is really how it seems. Meanwhile, Lisbeth is watching this all unfold. Her life is being displayed for everyone to see, except for a key event in her life. She can't help but to wonder why this event which has led her to be what she is and who she is is kept such a secret when everything else is being put out there on display. Mikael is seeking more information on Lisbeth and is slowly discovering things about her life that just continues to convince him that she is innocent. And slowly the pieces begin to fall together as Lisbeth and Mikael work together again to solve the murders and deal with Lisbeth's past.

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There is so much life to this story. So much to each of the characters. One of the things about this book and the first book in the series is that the characters are deeply flawed. They aren't just written with small quirks that eventually come off as flaws. These characters are written with emotional problems and dark pasts. It gives these characters a little more realism to them because unlike many books these characters aren't those happy, cookie-cutter characters but dark and twisted. In a way, it almost seems wrong to root for them. None of them are innocent, but somehow you want these characters that you learn so much about to come out on top and not get taken down for things they did or didn't do. It makes for an interesting read. Especially when throughout the entire series you as the reader feels conflicted about how to feel about the characters and the situation.

37/52