"Beautifully rendered, sharply observed, and intensely moving. Writing with uncommon acuity and generosity, Tilney pierces the heart of a boy, exposing it without betraying it. The Expectations is an unsentimental novel about adolescence, written for adults, to be read not so that we might remember our blundering younger selves but that we might forgive them. A gift of a novel." (Susan Rieger, author of The Heirs and The Divorce Papers)

"The Expectations portrays all the intrigue of adolescence - sexual longing, competitive aspiration, and betrayal - while illuminating the most poignant of growing-up realities: It's scary to figure out who you are, and even scarier when you have no idea. Tilney expertly evokes the human yearning to be recognized as Somebody, even when you fear you are nobody." (Katharine Dion, author of The Dependents)

"Prep school isn't what it used to be, as Ben Weeks discovers during his first year at the elite St. James School. Debut author Tilney deftly limns the unchanging eponymous expectations: that students will graduate to the Ivy League and real-world leadership; that while at St. James they will uphold such dubious traditions as ferocious competitiveness in sports and brutal hazing of new students. But Tilney also nails the changing social climate of the mid-1990s...The Expectations paints a compassionate portrait of a confused young man groping for maturity...Smart, shrewdly observed, and highly readable." (Kirkus Reviews)