Cover Image: Expectation

Expectation

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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.

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Wow! Beautifully written. It's like the author followed me and my friends in London. I can relate to the borth London brunches, the markets, the highs and lows of friendship, everything.
An remarkable portrayal of girls becoming women and the intricacies of female friendships.

I've updated this review as the book keeps coming back to me. A brilliant read.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Thank you so much the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary electronic copy in return for an honest review.

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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.

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This is such a true to life story in so many ways, you can 100% empathise with the characters and where things went wrong. Really enjoyable book to read

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It was very readable, very moreish - I read it in just a day or two. But the female friendships did not seem all that deep and believable to me. It felt too slight, too superficial, somewhat underwhelming.

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The complicated relationships of three females is a realistic and engaging read. As they shift loyalties and grow into their new lives and relationships, you feel like you know these realistic characters.

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Triangles, trios, triangulation... Being at the 'top' or being part of the steady base... In terms of relationships, I find trios fascinating, which is why I couldn't go past Anna Hope's story about three friends - Hannah, Cate and Lissa.

Hannah and Cate met at high school. Hannah and Lissa met at university. Hannah has something Lissa wants (a husband). Cate has something Hannah wants (a baby). Alliances shift between the three and loyalties are tested - who said that triangles are the 'most stable' of shapes?

The story moves between the 1990s when the women are living together on the edge of a common in East London, and ten years later when they are struggling with unfulfilled dreams and plans.

There are some terrific scenes when the women are younger - their lethargy regarding study; lazy Sundays and killer hangovers in their share house; impulsive love affairs. As the pressures of adulthood take over - mortgages, jobs and bills to pay, there's an appropriate shift in tone.

Their laissez-faire attitude toward feminism was particularly interesting and very much resonated -

The seminar is called Feminisms. It is not full. There is a general feeling, in the popular culture, that feminism has done its work. It is the era of the Spice Girls. Of the ladette. Lissa, the daughter of a feminist, has taken it for granted that she is a feminist too. A wholly unexamined position.

Hope explores the 'fumbling of the feminist baton' through the women's flailing careers, faltering relationships and attitudes toward motherhood. But while all the ingredients are there, the story falls short. Hope avoids picking apart the uglier emotions - envy, shame, guilt - the stuff that drives friendship stories, and instead, delivers safe plot turns.

The key message is about the importance of long friendships - 'You must keep hold of your friendships... The women. They're the only thing that will save you in the end'. Unfortunately, it's diluted as the story winds to a safe conclusion. Although, I was left wondering if there is such a thing as a 'conclusion' when a friendship has been badly damaged.

2.5/5 I think I was expecting something more ambitious.

I received my copy of Expectation from the publisher, Random House UK, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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I'm already a huge fan of Anna Hope, and this book did not disappoint. It is gripping, and follows the lives of three women: Hannah, Cate and Lissa. A touching and sensitive novel, about female friendship, ambition and motherhood. I read it at one sitting and think it would make the perfect holiday read.

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I enjoyed this book- based on 3 very different friends and their journeys over decades. The jumps in time worked well and I was eager to discover how their stories plotted out. A real tale of how strong friendships need to be if they are to survive the worse betrayal ever.

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I bloody loved this book. Such a wonderful, wonderful story of Lissa, Hannah and Cate and the highs, lows, twists, turns, joys and heartbreaks of their lives and their friendships. Beautifully written with compassion but never schmaltzy.

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Don’t get me wrong, I love a good romance novel. The kind where two impossibly perfect people fall in love and live happily ever after. I don’t care how ‘unliterary’ they are, sometimes it’s lovely to kick back, knock back a glass of wine and escape into an idyllic world.
But, then there is the rest of the time. The time when life is falling down around your ears, all you feel like you do is shout at the kids, things aren’t going right and quite frankly reading these novels feels like a pointy-shoed kick in the vagina.
Enter Expectation.
The three main characters; Hannah, Cate and Lissa feel so real; they could be your friend, your neighbour, your work colleague. Through them, I felt seen as a woman. That it’s ok that I’m not perfect, indeed that perfection isn’t normal and that we all are just trying the best we can with the hand we’ve been dealt.
The novel explores friendship and what it means to be a woman in society today. The portrayal of women, warts and all, reminded me so much of Nobody’s Wife by Laura Pearson, particularly in terms of Lissa’s story. For such a long time women within books, television and film have overwhelmingly been portrayed as unattainably perfect. Shiny and prettily rounded, but yet in real life we have sharp edges, we are not perfect and we make poor choices. Too often there have only been two types of women available to us; the heroine and the bitch. When in reality, aren’t we all a little bit of both? Haven’t we all done things we’re ashamed of? Said things we shouldn’t? To read a novel where women are accurately portrayed and are not defined by a single poor choice is refreshing to say the least.
One of the elements of modern womanhood which I felt came through really strongly was the pressure we are under. So many times I see younger women on Twitter stating their panic that they don’t know what to do with their lives, or that it feels like their friends have everything and they’re being left behind, as if we only have a few ‘good’ years and everything has to be squeezed in right there and then. Cate, Hannah and Lissa are the product of this world, the expectation that they feel to achieve, not only for themselves but to feel accepted as a ‘success’ by society; careers, motherhood, relationships, it all spirals into something so unachievable. It really made me sit and think hard about the expectations I have placed on myself and in all honesty this novel was almost a form of therapy in itself, allowing me to let up and forgive myself for not being everything I thought I should be.
The story charts their friendship and their lives individually over a number of years and is seen from each woman’s viewpoint. Narratively, I did find it difficult to follow at times – however, as I read a Netgalley ARC, this may have been made clearer and more definitive by the time of publication.
My only disappointment was with Cate’s storyline. I think though, because she was the character I most identified with and her story mirrored my own life in so many ways, I placed my own experiences and expectations upon her character. For me, her transition period from how she was feeling as a new Mum to how her story concluded felt a little rushed and ignored. That being said, I felt both Lissa and Hannah’s stories were pitched perfectly.
Emotional and relatable; these women could be real. An incredibly honest novel about modern day women in all our imperfect glory. I cannot more highly recommend.

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Perhaps I'm too long in the tooth for this book (50's). I found it hard to be sympathetic to the main characters and just felt they all needed to count their blessings a bit more or there needed to be a bit more variety in the source of their unhappiness (motherhood or lack of). Things could be a lot worse and in later life there will be fresh challenges.

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Hannah, Cate, and Lissa share a house in London together. At 29, they are great friends and doing their best to make their way in life. Expectation follows their journeys together, and apart, until they are in their 40’s with frequent flashbacks to earlier days to give depth to their stories.

Anna Hope packs in so many experiences to the book to bring her characters to life. On the surface the more obvious themes are explored; Having children, not having children, getting married, having affairs, landing the perfect job, or just scraping by. As the women grow older she explores relationships with parents in the later stages of life, managing the transition into motherhood, and keeping old friendships alive throughout the constant change around them. These later themes resonate with the reader as Anna Hope offers an insightful view of the more challenging experiences as a 30 something woman. There are some devastating scenes which left me in tears, but others that were heartwarming. These are carefully balanced to maintain sincerity as opposed to drama.

I devoured the book quickly and missed it when it was over. The three friends made a huge impression and I couldn’t help dwelling over their struggles, their successes, and their endings. It is so refreshing to read an honest portrayal of 30-40 year olds who are doing the same as the rest of us; getting through life in the best way they know how. The journey isn’t perfect, the ending isn’t all wrapped up, and this makes the characters feel like old friends by the end of the book.

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In 'Expectation' Anna Hope has written a contemporary tale of female friendship, being a daughter, being a mother (or not) and the anxieties of 21st century life. The three main characters (Cate, Hannah and Lissa) are well written although I did not warm to any of them. I found this a quick and relatively light read which was fairly realistic in its portrayal of middle class white women's lives in London. This limitation was what reduced the impact for me. Although the three characters all had issues and problems they were essentially all having a good life and were somewhat self-obsessed, to the point of destroying relationships with partners, families and friends. Perhaps this is what the author was setting out to demonstrate. I did warm to Dea, a young mother who befriends Cate when she is suffering from post-natal depression, and was disappointed when she did not appear in later sections of the book, as if discarded onto Cate's scrapheap as unimportant once she had sorted out her priorities. Lissa's mother is another sympathetic character, a feminist activist and artist, but she is written as if she is the root of all selfish Lissa's current problems. Overall I was not as moved by this book as I had hoped.
Thanks to the publisher via Net Galley for providing me with a complimentary ARC of this title in return for an honest review.

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I’m conflicted about this book. Mostly, I enjoyed reading it – the focus on female friendships was great, the storylines were all interesting and felt realistic. I enjoyed the setting, the dialogue, and the prose is occasionally really lovely...
But, there is an aspect of the narrative that I am incredibly angry about. It seems to me that the author left no room in the narrative for a woman to be okay with being childless. Meet the characters:
Cate struggles with motherhood, because... you know, raising a tiny human is hard, but whatev, she loves her kid. It turns out okay once she admits that she’s got some post-partum and needs to self-care as well as childcare.

Hannah is an empty shell of a woman without a baby, and when she finally starts to make peace with her infertility after years of failed IVF ¬¬– poof! She gets knocked-up, has a baby and finds perfect satisfaction with her life.


And then there is Lissa... Lissa had an abortion in her early 20s and therefore (apparently), must be punished. She goes from best friend to villainess when she screws her best friend’s husband – naturally then losing both relationships. She finally has to admit failing professionally as an actress and then spirals into self-loathing as she decides to feel like she is selling herself while making ends meet working as a life model. Her mother dies of cancer... And their last heart to heart is Lissa apologizing for not making her mom a grandmother!!! And, years later, when she finally seems to have recovered from all that she has to wake up in her mid-forties with frequent shocks of regret that she just didn’t pop out a young’un or two. FFS.

I understand that that is a book about motherhood, the expectation (it is the title after all) and the reality. And, I appreciate the variety of perspectives on the subject included in it – including the struggles of the dads which are touched on meaningfully a few times. BUT,
I strongly resent the narrative absense of it being okay to not want to be a mom. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the only character who doesn’t have a kid is the one who is made to villainized and made to suffer repeatedly. And, that is just not okay.

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Expectation was exquisite. The beautiful, almost sparse sentences made the writing look and feel effortless, and the characterisation was so knowing and true to how female friendships and relationships develop, evolve, mend and are repaired. Achingly good. I loved it.

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I was immediately drawn into the story about the three friends. The story is told in the heady and carefree past and the present day. Lissa and Hannah met at Uni and Hannah and Cate at school where they were forever rivals but always friends. In the past they lived in a rambling old house on the edge of the common with low rent and no worries that a bottle of rioja couldn't sort.

In the present day life is hard for all three girls. Cate rushed into marriage with a man she met online when she falls pregnant and struggles with the baby and life, Hannah is desperate to have a baby and has gone through several rounds of IVF. Her husband, Nath who Lissa is friends with wants them to give up but she's determined she's having a family no matter what. And Lissa, the actress who still blames Cate for her loosing out on that staring role in which would have made her a household name....

One of the women betrays her friend so deeply you wonder if there's any coming back from it.

However, there are happy moments dark moments, disappointment, love, choices and the usual highs and lows of life. I simply loved this story and the characters. It is beautifully written and one of my favourite books this year.

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Expectation follows the friendship of three women over 10 years, it goes back and forth between present day and past events in the women’s lives. All three women have their own personal struggles and throughout the years have become more and more disconnected with each other.
What Hope does particularly well is the depth of each of the characters and there were several scenes in the novel that moved me. I also enjoyed that the themes of friendship explored the difficulties of maintaining such relationships as the years pass. This book deeply resonated with me and I’m sure every reader could find part of themselves in the three women

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Well, I seemed to have missed all the hype surrounding this novel, as the first time I’d heard of it was right here, on Netgalley.
As a grown woman in her late 30’s, I felt an immediate affinity with the 3 lead characters.
Unfortunately, it also sort of ended there. I found their personalities a bit two dimensional & predictable. Always complaining about things they don’t have. (I’m as cynical as they come but they even tested me).
Personally, I found it all a bit negative, and repetitive. This wasn’t really one for me. I’m so, so sorry.
Thank you to the author & publisher for my arc.

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Good summer read and one of the beach. Makes you think about what you plan for your life and what actually happens - this is done to circumstances and things that crop up along the way. And knowing the grass is not always greener.

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