This book tells the stories of three women, Lissa, Hannah and Cate, following their lives from 2004 up to the present day. They go from being carefree young flat dwellers to achieving some kind of middle-aged maturity. The narrative is deliberately disjointed and flits between events in their interlinked lives. The story is most at home in fashionable, bijou London while the intermittent rural locations of Kent, Devon and the North of England appear as almost alien places where odd things happen! The lack of a consistent timeline is confusing but it helps to backfill the story.

There is lots of stuff about trying to become something. Lissa is trying to be an actor, Cate is struggling to be a parent and a wife and Hannah is desperate to become a mother. Cate and Hannah have been competitive since their school days but all three of them seem uncertain as to what they really want from life. Their parents, whether middle class, working class or arty, seem to have a much clearer idea of what life is about and what they want from it - as do the male characters. Cate's husband Sam is a chef, Hannah's husband Nathan is a university lecturer and Lissa hangs out with some actors but the males seem largely to be there as foils for the grief and lusts of the women. We don't hear much about their problems, beyond the ones imposed by their partners that is!

And, what problems these are! Cate has a baby son, Tom, and is falling apart under the strain of motherhood, ignoring offers of help and living in a kind of crisis of not coping. Hannah is on multiple cycles of IVF veering from hope to despair. They both take their problems out on the husbands! They also make them worse, as Cate thinks increasingly about a lesbian relationship she had when she was younger and Hannah simply drives Nathan apart from her. Lissa doesn't really help because she sleeps with Nathan and causes even more trouble.

Gradually, things get resolved - at least in part. Hannah has a baby, Cate is more settled and Lissa moves to Mexico. They're mostly reconciled with their mothers who emerge as bastions of stability and just about seem to be making sense of their relationships with men. However, it has been a difficult ride.

So, what's the book about? If there is a purpose to these unfolding stories it seems to be to emphasise that these women have no idea what they really want from life or, perhaps, what they are entitled to despite the opportunities which have been showered upon them. They also seem to have viewed men as a way of providing some kind of direction while also somehow blaming them for where they have taken a wrong turn. Like their careers and where they live, sex seems to have been a matter of chance as well, as if relationships are just something which happened to them and are also outside their control.

I'm not sure the writer wants the women to be seen like this. I think they're meant to be sassy and confident, forging their way in the world, facing some brutal challenges and despite being compromised in some ways achieving emotional maturity by the end. It just didn't quite work like that for me but it makes the story more nuanced.

There’s some odd cultural signalling in the book as well. People are identified by piles of books, Aldi gets a mention and there is 'good' wine and 'heroic' coffee which you will recognise if you read the Guardian! There is a sense of millennial angst countered by the lived-in stability of the older parents and, in that sense, there's a whiff of misogyny as if these women got the right start and blew it but maybe I'm reading too much into that!

Overall, it's an interesting read and well written. I think some readers will warm to the women and identify with their problems but, as a father, I think I would want my daughter to be better equipped to survive the pressures of modern living.

Friendship. So complex. Who needs enemies when friends can do this to you! Three friends in their carefree younger days. Fast forward a few years, add marriage, career progression and happiness into the mix, but it doesn’t happen for all the friends. Underlying currents of jealousy run riot & there are some things that you can never take back!! Highly recommend.

An exceptionally readable novel from Anna Hope.

In a departure from her previous novels set in the past this contemporary novel explores the lives of three friends, Cate, Hannah and Lissa who shared a house in their early twenties and now look back on those times from the aspect of present day issues.

Whilst their problems are far from unique this really felt like a peek behind the curtain of other lives with their ups and downs and the somewhat angst ridden fear us modern women are prone to in wanting our lives to be meaningful. Ultimately though this book turns to female friendship.

I’m going to be glib and say that I didn’t know what to expect when I read Expectation by Anna Hope. I had chosen it based on the strength of how much I liked Anna Hope’s previous novel The Ballroom. I didn’t, however, expect to be as immersed in the world that she created so fervently. For me, Expectation was a one-sitting read.

The story follows the lives of three friends who, through the innocence of youth, believe that their lives will follow a certain path and trajectory. Yes, there will be pitfalls along the way but they have an end goal and they know what they want. So what happens when that doesn’t happen? Fast-forward to the summer of their lives when they are making life changing decisions and are not where they expected to be we can see the harsh reality of life paralleled with what was once youthful hope as the last vestiges of that optimism fade away.
Through this, our protagonists – Hannah, Cate and Lissa – have to face their reality and also the knowledge that they aren’t necessarily the best versions of themselves anymore.

Throughout this book Margaret Mitchell’s words kept ringing in my head: “Life is under no obligation to give you what you expect.” I think that because I am of similar age (physically/emotionally) to the characters I really felt that the novel resonated with me and compelled me to read more. Anna Hope has created a relatable cast of characters with problems that are more pertinent than I realised. Besides an astonishing ability to tell a good story, Hope manages to embed you into the world she has created and makes you examine yourself.

Expectation by Anna Hope is available now.

For more information regarding Anna Hope (@Anna_Hope) please visit www.annahope.uk.

For more information regarding Random House (@randomhouse) please visit www.randomhousebooks.com.

Anna Hope is one of my favourite author's but I found this book quite lacking. It felt like her agent/editor had told Ms. Hope to "write something for millennial" rather than this story leading the plot. As a millennial, I didn't really connect with any of the characters and so I wasn't really routing for anyone or anything. The plot, and characters, were both lacking and it was a rather negative experience.

I thought this was a stand-out read. I have read very little that taps into the various expectations women put upon themselves in their thirties, and I connected deeply with each of these characters. The prose is crisp, this is sad and very truthful, with interesting characters, spark and pace. Would highly recommend!

This was just okay. It reminds me a lot of Sally Rooney's 'Normal People' and I really didn't get the hype with that one.

Lissa, Hannah and Cate have been friends for years and are now in their mid-thirties. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the three women with a few flashback chapters in between.

Lissa is an actress, still trying to make it and catch her big break. Hannah is in a long-term relationship with Nathan and they are struggling to conceive and Cate got married to Sam quite quickly and she has a baby; Tom. Each of them aren't without their problems and it honestly just felt a bit boring for me. It's as though the book trundles along and there's no real excitement. I don't think it helps that I didn't really warm to any of the characters.

I received a copy of this book via net galley. It describes the highs and lows of female friendship through the eyes of Cate, Lissa and Hannah. I found that i couldn't really like any of the characters, they felt shallow, vapid and ultimately self-centred. That isn't to say that i hated it, it was an easy read, there were some parts that really drew me in bur for the most part it was a superficial narrative.

Anna Hope’s novel ‘Expectation’ is about the lives of three close friends, Cate, Hannah and Lissa. The book moves back and forward through the years of their friendship from university days, through their twenties and thirties to now. This is well-written and I found myself really invested in the story. A great read.

Expectation follows three women as they navigate adulthood, friendship, relationships, feminism, activism, academia, careers (or the lack of them), babies (or the lack of them) and a general sense that life has not necessarily turned out as they expected in their hopeful youth.

Cate is dealing with new motherhood, the upending of her familiar world and a niggling suspicion that she’s married the wrong man. Hannah is the most professionally successful, the one who apparently has her life most together, but is unable to conceive a child with husband Nathan. And Lissa’s acting career hasn’t exactly set the world alight.

We meet the women at different stages in their lives and I found the darting about in time a little confusing, at least initially as I got used to the characters, but this did settle down after a while.

I found all three women relatable in different ways, and also enjoyed the subsidiary characters. Lissa’s mother, Sarah, was someone I would have liked to spend more time with. Dea and Zoe, also.

Expectation is sharply observed and insightful. If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that some of the endings - Cate’s and Hannah’s - feel a bit too neat. But overall I enjoyed it very much.

On another note, this is almost certainly the first novel I’ve ever read which makes reference to feminist philosopher and semiotician Julia Kristeva, so kudos for that, and indeed to anyone who can make head or tail of Kristeva’s work, because I certainly never could.

I saw Expectation cropping up in bookish chat online so I was glad to get my hands on an ebook of the book from Netgalley. Anna Hope tells the lives of three women (Hannah, Cate and Lissa), through two timelines, one when they are in their twenties living together in a house, in London while the second timeline looks at them further in their lives where they are battling to get pregnant, having career woes, hating being trapped in a house, in the middle of a new town with a baby. Life hasn't turned out the way they were hoping and their friendship is stranded and disappointment. I really enjoyed this book but I didn't love it as I found the characters didn't appreciate what they had in their lives. Fans of Sally Rooney will love this book.

Readable, but in all honesty, I found this book a little dull. It does reflect the atmosphere and setting of the era, but for me was lacking in something.

Three women. Three lives...or more? Or fewer? They overlap, cross over and part again, in their complicated, interesting lives.
Flawed, human, normal, this is a complicated, detailed story of the changes in women’s lives and relationships.
I liked it, and I liked the way the ending was realistic and believable too - a good book!

This book was so beautiful but so poignant and sad. It showed how messy and complicated life can be, and yet how joy and happiness can be found in the darkest times. It was unsettling because it was a perfect reflection of life.

I didn't finish this book. I found it very slow-moving and the characters didn't grab hold of me. I'm sure it will work for other people but it just wasn't my thing I'm afraid.

The targeted market is obviously female and I am male but I was expecting this to rise above "chick-lit". Unfortunately, for me, it didn't.

I love a book that deals with young women growing up and moving on and this is a prime example.

The only reason I haven’t scored it higher is that I just didn’t particularly like any of them! The only sympathetic character seems to be punished for being both attractive and childless, a strange dichotomy.

This story of three friends living their lives from childhood through to middle age is a lovely read that offers perspective through time of the choices and consequences of women’s lives today.
There are some beautifully written passages about female friendship and some moving ideas and themes that come across well.

The themes explored are ambitious and touch many aspects of women’s lives, although they do focus on middle-class white women who maybe should count their blessings more than they seem able to.

The three main characters are well-drawn but hard to sympathise with, they are concerned with their own issues and very self-obsessed, I had little patience with some of their dilemmas, though I understand they would be real enough as you lived through it.

The character who most intrigued me and who I would have loved to hear more about was Lissa’s mother Sarah, who seemed to have much larger aspirations and concerns. Some of the later scenes with her and Lissa were the most moving in the book. The main characters in contrast seemed much shallower in their preoccupations.

The book is a well-crafted look at modern womanhood and its challenges and pressures. The scale is at once large and also micro-focused, and the risk with this is that it looks patterned and too neat with its conclusions. But it’s a risk worth taking for the thoughts it provokes and the issues it puts on the table for discussion - well-worth reading.



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I can’t recommend this highly enough. It was fantastically written and in parts a really raw look at close female friendship and love. Very original, I loved all the twists and turns. Several places left me completely shocked (in the best way possible) and desperate to find out what would happen next.
Thanks NetGalley!

Immersive read about three women living in London whose lives don't live up to expectations. What then? The characters jump off the page. I'd recommend to readers who might enjoy a grown-up version of Normal People.

Hannah, Cate and Lissa come together at school and college, and share a house on the edge of a Hackney park. Their futures seem limitless and exciting: the world is their oyster.

As time passes, their golden futures have tarnished as none has managed to have it all. A career, a relationship, a family, a home, a better life seem elusive. We follow their paths and their relationships, get to know them better and discover what transpires.

They are three different women with three different lives that are interwoven. I was sad to leave them at the end and would love to return to them in the future.



Expectation is an intelligent and well written book, with plenty to think about.