Blog Tour: The Predictions by Bianca Zander (Melissa’s review)

The Predictions
written by Bianca Zander
published by William Morrow & Company

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange  for an honest review.

Did I enjoy this book: As someone who doesn’t usually go for love story-type novels, I was pleasantly surprised. I agreed to read this book to shake myself out of a reading funk (there’s only so much alien-dystopian-fantasy a gal can take), and it did the trick. The ending was just a touch too “happily ever after” for me, but then, I’m giantly pregnant and therefore generally cranky toward everything right now, so it very well could just be me.

I love the characters, and to be honest, I had more than a few flashbacks to my college days (long-haired boys in bands? Yes, please!). I love that Zander keeps the story going long enough for readers to see what we all figure out eventually: life continually evolves, and that’s okay. That’s the way it should be.

Would I recommend it: It’s a decent book. Give it a whirl . . . everybody could use a happy ending every now and again.

About the book – from Goodreads: From the author of the acclaimed The Girl Below comes a stunning novel of one woman’s attempt to outrun the destiny that is predicted for her, moving from a remote New Zealand commune in the waning days of 1970s free-love experimentation to the heady music scene of 1980s London.

Gaialands, a bucolic vegan commune in the New Zealand wilderness, is the only home fifteen-year-old Poppy has ever known. It’s the epitome of 1970s counterculture–a place of free love, hard work, and high ideals…at least in theory. The reality is complicated and sometimes fraught, especially as its children reach adolescence. Poppy is drawn to handsome sixteen-year-old Lukas, who’s increasingly skeptical of Gaialands and the adults who shape its rules.

To help ‘heal’ the commune’s energy, new arrival Shakti harnesses her divination powers in a Predictions ceremony. All of Gaialands’ teenagers receive a card outlining their futures. Poppy, predicted to find her true love overseas, joins Lukas when he follows his dream of starting a punk rock band first in Auckland and then on to London, where punk has given way to 80s pop and hair metal. Struggling simply to survive as they navigate the city’s squats, pubs, and burgeoning clubs, she and Lukas drift apart. Poppy finds a life that looks very like the one her prediction promised, but is it the one she truly wants? And if not, can she define her own happiness, even if it takes her in unanticipated directions?

The Predictions is a mesmerizing, magical novel of fate, love, mistakes, and finding your place.

 

About the author: Bianca Zander is British-born but has lived in New Zealand for the past two decades. Her first novel, The Girl Below, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and she is the recipient of the Creative New Zealand Louis Johnson New Writers’ Bursary and the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship, recognizing her as one of New Zealand’s eminent writers. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the Auckland University of Technology.

Find Ms. Zander here: web, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads