Expectation. Three girls and their stories! This was a really good read. I felt the hopes, dreams, disillusionments and betrayals. I also saw and felt the girls growing up and starting to appreciate their impact (& efforts/struggles) of their parents and their backgrounds. Loved the stories and they broke my heart a little bit. Definitely one to read

Female friendship is put to the test in this three-way narrative set over ten years. Anna Hope has brought a time-worn theme up to date: thirty-something, ex-college friends looking back over their life choices and facing the realisation that previous generations of women have had to accept - that women can't easily ‘have it all’ when the biological clock is starting to speed up.This novel is being compared to Sally Rooney's award–winning 'Normal People' but I personally found this author’s lower-key writing style more accessible and her characters smewhat more believable.

I am conflicted about this book. On the one hand it’s a well written and enjoyable read about lives in London that would be a fantasy for most. On the other, it’s a load of middle-class, faux-bohemian angst. Characters living enviable lives, wafting around massive, fairy-light bedecked homes that they’ve bought for pennies, or been gifted, and popping down to their local bougie shop for artisanal bread and olive oil, while moaning about how hard life is.
Hmmm

I am astonished at how far Anna Hope has gone since "The Ballroom" - "Expectation" is one true page-turner.

This "millennial novel" is filled with ups and downs, happiness and tragedy, love and hate, betrayal and forgiveness, spanning years and generations of female friendship. What a great book! Not unlike life itself.
Some might find it poorly structured, jumping around different times and periods, somewhat depressing perhaps. But I found it moving and hopeful, if occasionally heartbreaking. A good summer read, but so much more than that.

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Anna Hope’s "Expectation".

What a book. WHAT A BOOK. Powerful. Poignant. Poetic. Not a single word out of place. A book you feel you've been waiting your whole life to read. Extraordinary...

I enjoyed the first part of this book, the opening was very interesting and set the background to the story. Once you were led into how the three lives had evolved for Hannah, Cat and Lissa it became brilliant, although typical of how life challenges affect you. these days from IVF to the very difficult life of an aspiring actress. But when we were led back into the past it became slightly tedious so I didn't enjoy those moments as much. This could have been a stand alone novel leading us through the up to date trials and tribulations of life for thirty something professionals and older.

What do women expect from their lives? For some security, others family, maybe a career, but is this what they really want, does it change over time or is it just what is expected of them by others?
Anna Hope has produced another book full of talking points and engaging characters. Although a little slow at times, this is a book to savour and enjoy at leisure.

Many thanks to Anna Hope, Net Galley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers - Doubleday..
Really enjoyed this story of life and all its twists and turns. Three friends, all very different who have known each other for years, yet there is competitiveness between them when they get older, misunderstandings about their different choices, and one very bad decision. I think it's realistic in that it shows you can't know anyone completely even if you've known them for most of your life. People still do things to surprise and disappoint no matter how well you thought your knew them. Real, heartfelt friendship is a very rare thing.

This is the enjoyable story of the lives of three women, Hannah, Kate and Lissa, who live together in their twenties, and share a very exciting life in the middle of London, looking forward to fulfilling their dreams of the future, which look promising. Their lives do not follow the tracks they have been expecting and their friendship is tested in various ways. They finally weather the storms and settle down to a sort of peace and acceptance. Fourteen years later they have a get-together and reminisce about their shared past . It is the story of growing up and happens to all of us. London life is pictured very well, but the characters of the three women merge together and none of them is very memorable. I would recommend this as a light holiday read.

This is the story of three girls growing up and it tells of how they met and of their lives in various different stages, until at the end they are reunited and enjoying a catch-up picnic. Each of the girls, Hannah, Cate and Lissa, tell their own stories, remembering their carefree and exciting childhoods when everything seemed possible. They also told about their expectations, dreams and ambitions and how they went about trying to achieve the lives they so dearly hoped for. It not only details their triumphs and disappointments, but also their loves and losses and how their fortunes change and turn around, influencing their futures. Finally set back in London, they chat, reminisce and try to come to terms with what their lives have laid bare for them.
Anna Hope knows how to tell a story, as witnessed within her first two historical fiction novels which were successful and well respected. This, her third novel, marks a departure from this genre and a change to Adult Literary Fiction. I have to hold my hands up and admit I really struggled with this novel. I found it poorly structured, very depressing and also very hard work. It did pick up a little towards the end, but I didn’t like the three main characters at all. Nevertheless I’d like to thank the publisher Transworld for my copy of the novel, sourced through my membership of NetGalley and sent to me with the promise of my genuine opinions sent in an honest book review. It sounded really enticing when I read the ‘blurb’ but unfortunately I really didn’t enjoy this reading experience.

I loved this! Sally Rooney meets Holly Bourne, EXPECTATION is a perfect holiday read for 2019. It made me smile and also sob a little bit - I loved the explorations of parenthood, career expectations and complicated girl friendships.

I am a little disappointed that the book falls into the trope of endless IVF ‘and as soon as she stops trying, she gets pregnant’ as I think it would have been more developed as a narrative for Hannah to come to terms with her childlessness - and probably better for the reader, too.

In what I feel is a enormous change of direction from this author, my expectation was that this book was not going to work. Her previous two novels very much set in the historical fiction genre - this one, modern fiction. Was it going to work?

My fear was it was not -  they were unfounded and I found this a very interesting and engaging novel and at times quite uncomfortable reading.

Hannah, Cate and Lissa are friends, we see the story weave between present day and their lives now and the past where you begin to understand the past behind the present.

Brought together through different means but living a world where you have little or no responsibility, to be able to fight a cause with passion and to live the world you want to live.

Then life changes, the friendships between them change as they all deal with what is in front of them. 

Hannah - married, desperate for a baby and despondent by the fact that nothing has worked. The strain is starting to show in her marriage, especially when her friend Cate has a baby.

Cate is struggling with being a mother, stuck in Kent away from her friends and dealing with a child that she thinks she can never protect enough.

Lissa, a failed actress still trying to make it in a world where she still seeks approval from her mother who clearly made the wrong sort of impact on Lissa as a child. Still single, she envies those in stable relationships.

None of these women's expectations for being an adult resemble everything they talked and dreamed about.

Can their friendship survive such changes both small and large and can your expectations ever really be met.

I was captivated by this book as I could not see where it was going and what it was trying to do or achieve but I felt this was the intent of the author. No one can see where we are all going or where we might end up as expectations change as the world and people change around us.

A novel to read that brings great discussion about the friendships and dynamics of such in your own lives. When you have finished the book, give yourself time to digest and reflect you may well start to look at things differently and expect something else.

A novel about the lives of three friends: Hannah, Cate and Lissa. We meet them in their late twenties, learn how they became friends and follow them as they grow up and grow older, seeking but not always finding happiness and fulfilment.

This is a good book, engaging, well written. I was absorbed and finished it in less than twenty four hours. The characters, their relationships and connections felt real and familiar, the neighbourhood too. I read Expectation on a cold-ish early spring day but I see it really as a perfect summer read. And this is fine but it is also safe and undemanding. If I am being really honest, even when Hannah’s, Cate’s and Lissa’s lives become less comfortable, when they’re about to spiral out of control, Expectation was still a comfort read. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily but I expected more.

Hope writes very well, beautifully at times and I did enjoy the book but I wished that she played it less safe. Having said that, I’d still be up for reading whatever she writes next.

Expectation is a different genre from Anna Hope's previous historical novels as it moves to the present day and the entwining lives of three friends, Hannah, Lissa and Cate.

Written from three points of view we meet them as adults ten years on from when they first met as young women, Hannah and her husband Nate have been trying unsuccessfully to have a family; Cate is married to Sam with a child and living unhappily in the sticks; Lissa is a failed actress.

Expectation is a great title. It encompasses what is normal when we are young and have everything to look forward to; then the reaction when life doesn't go the way we hope and as adults we have to learn ways of acceptance and coping.

Anna Hope's writing and characterisation skills made me feel for all the women even though there is a huge betrayal by one of them. We are all human, after all.

I loved the book and think it will appeal to many readers. Thanks to Alison Barrow and Doubleday for the opportunity to read and review Expectation.

From the carefree days of your early 20s, to the realisation that life doesn't always pan out the way you planned it - however well you planned it - and that getting what we want (or what we think we want) isn't always the answer, this is a beautifully observed new book from Anna Hope.

Three very different women have been friends since they were teenagers. Each of them is unhappy and envious of the others at various stages of the novel which switches between past and present highlighting how they have changed over the years as life hasn't turned out how they'd hoped. Quite a depressing novel but the characters were interesting enough to make me want to keep reading.

Expectation follows the lives of three friends and is mainly set in the present time, a change from Anna Hope’s previous historical novels. We find out how the women met; at school or university and how their expectations for the future have not always materialised.
The novel also explores female relationships and how they change over time. Anna Hope writes with such sensitive honesty that no emotion is left hidden. The narrative explores the disappointment each woman feels with their present lives and the envy they may feel towards what they see each other has achieved.
I have found Anna Hope’s previous novels to be exceptionally well written with engaging characters and captivating storylines. Expectation is no exception to this but is a much slower paced book. However, the issues raised within it didn’t leave me when I finished the last page and the book does encourage reflection on your own life.

Written from the point of view of our main protagonists, I felt this book was like life itself. We find Hannah and Nathan, who are trying to become parents, Lissa and her failed career as an actress and Cate, who married Sam and cannot understand why. At the beginning of everything, they are hungry for adventure and desperate to live their lives but ten years on, they have all followed different paths and ended up in separate places.

This is a novel about the highs and lows of friendship, a novel about selfishness and remorse and families and about those dreams that never came true. It’s a story that is alive and that presents us with true life situations while exploring the space between expectation and reality. Our main protagonists will find their way out of the maze but how will they achieve that if they cannot longer trust each other?

I really enjoyed this novel, even though it made me sad to read what was happening sometimes. Friendship can dip, dive and rise again and it was inspiring to see these three women trying to find their feet again. Most of all I enjoyed the writing, Hope knows how to write.

This was not only a beautiful story but a beautifully written book too.

Anna Hope’s third novel is very different from her first two in that it is set in the present day with just a quick glance back to 2004 when three friends, Hannah, Cate and Lissa are house sharing in London Fields. This opening section is tinged with a sunny glow as we are told of the Saturday morning convivial trips to buy perfect picnic food to be enjoyed later in ‘the best park in London’. The girls, all in their late twenties, are enjoying life to the full. There’s much mention of hipsterish venues, interesting food, cool gigs etc. Reading this, I couldn’t help but think that it all felt a bit like a lifestyle advert, too shiny and stylish to be true. And maybe that’s the point. Are we seeing 2004 through the rose-tinted spectacles of the girls who, in the following section dated 2010, are older wiser and certainly unhappier? The section ends with the rather ominous, ‘They still have time to become who they are going to be.’
So, we fast-forward to find that Hannah is married to Nathan and having difficulty conceiving whilst Cate is married to Sam and struggling to look after baby Tom, lonely and depressed in Canterbury, away from her friends. Lissa is still single, chasing after acting jobs and feeling that maybe it’s time to quit this way of life. As always, Anna Hope develops these characters and all with whom they inter-act very carefully. She is also very good at setting scenes. The reader can easily picture the stale mess surrounding Cate in her grubby new home, Hannah’s magazine-perfect flat and Lissa’s mother’s bohemian kitchen, but where is all of this impressive writing leading us?
Motherhood is one of the central themes of the novel – hinted at by its title (which also suggests that these university educated privileged girls feel entitled to have what they want) and, of course, flagged up in the epigraph. Lissa struggles to believe that her mother truly loves her; Cate has lost her zest for life since becoming a mother and Hannah, who has always worked hard to achieve her goals, cannot accept her failure to have a child. Most of the novel’s narrative focuses on the ways in which these women move on from these positions. However, it is surprising that they are all still friends in 2018, or at least friendly enough to replicate the picnic scenario of 2004. Why would Lissa still be welcome after her behaviour towards vulnerable Hannah back in 2010?
I enjoyed this novel for the most part but, at its conclusion, I was left feeling that loose ends were tied just a little too neatly to persuade me that ‘Expectation’ is a serious exploration of real women’s struggles. Back in the park, the impression of that lifestyle advert lingers…
My thanks to NetGalley and Transworld for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

Expectation is the story of three friends and how they grow up from twentysomethings in London to be older, with dashed dreams and new struggles. Hannah, Cate, and Lissa shared a house in East London, with carefree fun and picnics. However, ten years later they're not where they hoped, with careers and marriages and children big issues in their lives. They wrestle with envy over each others' lives as they work out how to make the most of the lives they have, rather than those they expected.

The narrative weaves together moments from their past with this less-than-ideal future, showing how their friendship has developed and their lives have changed. The atmosphere is one of personal contemplation, all about the human connections that each of the main characters has and how they view their own lives and their friends'. Moments of possibility show how changeable life is, though the outcomes of these moments are often predictable. There is drama, it is overall a story of acceptance, and it would actually make a good book to read over a lazy afternoon in a park, as the characters might do themselves.

Expectation is really as expected: a narrative about friendship and about how the image of being young and full of promise cannot last. It's a good book, though it didn't quite have enough of a spark, and ended a little too neatly given its premise.