Cate, the only one of the three who is a mother is drowning in her new role-expected by everyone to be doing better at it than she is, she is absolutely struggling with her son.

Dabei fällt das Lesen nicht immer leicht, es ist mitunter sehr schmerzhaft und auch zuweilen fast unangenehm, Hannah, Cate und Lissa auf ihren sich immer wieder kreuzenden Wegen zu begleiten. The central question of the book, and actually the thing that most drew me in, was in the title Expectation, ‘what happens when we don’t fulfil our own expectations of ourselves? The characters are well-described and the situations that they find themselves in are convincingly portrayed and I would have liked to have learnt more about each of the women and also more about the supporting characters - particularly Lissa’s mother who seemed to have lived a full and interesting life; I also would have liked to have read a little more about some of the peripheral characters, such as the young woman Cate met at a playgroup who was in a same sex relationship and who helped Cate to see things in a different light. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the only character who doesn’t have a kid is the one who is villainized and made to suffer repeatedly.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Steering well clear of the saccharine, Hope rounds it off with a satisfying ending to a novel filled with wit, humanity and compassion.

Maybe it’s because I’m at the ‘pivotal’ stage in my life where the heroines of Expectation are at their most hopeful, alive with the hope of it all - and to comprehend the possibility that in ten years' time I might not be where I had hoped is devastating.Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit.

I think the marketing minds behind it have tried to make it sound weightier than it is, though, with the blurb claiming it “explores themes of love, lust, motherhood and feminism, while asking the greater question of what defines a generation. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. This is a surprisingly unambitious novel from Anna Hope after her wonderful Wake and the unusual The Ballroom. Red Magazine says it « will resonate with approximately 99% of women », so I guess I’m part of the 1%… Sure, it’s an addictive reading, but I expected so much more from this novel…! It’s based in East London, an area I’ve spent my adult life in, it’s about characters who are not where they thought they would be, a topic many people can relate to, and female friendship, something that you think of that should be simple and solid but can be so fragile.In fact, she doesn't want to have a baby at all - it is revealed that she had an abortion at some point in the past, and she suspects that her own mother would have been happier without a daughter getting in the way of her goals.