Carpe Librum

Leptospermum rubinette ~ Desert Snow


Audio Review Note: While well narrated by Simon Vance, even he couldn’t save the first part; however, he was very entertaining for the rest and does a good job differentiating the voices.

★★★★✩ I have made several aborted attempts to read this international bestseller without success, so finally, when it became Book of the Month in one of my GoodReads groups, I decided to listen to it on audio. Ha! I still ended up referring to the paperback copy so often that now I feel as if I’ve read the book twice. There were Vanger Family Tree flowcharts, time lines, chronological order lists, and back and forth emails that do not transfer well to audio, IMHO. In addition, the difficulty I had in getting into the story was not only with the foreign names and characters; there were the corporate world vernaculars and political implications that bogged the first part down for me. I had to really concentrate on this story and I didn’t find the beginning very exciting. GoodReads friends told me I had to persevere through the first part to get to the great middle. And, they were right. There is a great mystery in the middle of this book.

Stockholm, Sweden

Warning: There was a brutality toward one of the characters that I wasn’t expecting, but luckily it was short-lived – and she gets delicious revenge! The protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist, while not 100% loveable, is well-developed with a realism that is rings true. I certainly was cheering for spell-binding outcast, Lisbeth Salander, all the way. I’m glad I stuck with this mystery and I will definitely go on with the Millennium series. Why not? I have all the paperbacks and my library has all the audiobooks. Plus, I want to see what happens to these characters!

The Girl with the Dragon TattooThe Girl Who Played with FireThe Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest