ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – A New Home at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas
A New Home at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas is published by Boldwood and is available now. My thanks to the author for sending a copy my way.
Manchester, 1941
Kitty learned early on in her marriage that her husband, Bill Dunbar, isn’t reliable with money. So when they inherit the Dunbar family hotel at the start of the war, she’s hopeful that their financial worries are over… until the bailiffs turn up! With Bill now in the army, it’s up to Kitty to turn things around for her family, or risk ruin.
Lily worked as a chambermaid at Dunbar’s before the war. She met Daniel there, but their relationship was complicated by class differences and the disapproval of Daniel’s mother. Now Lily is pregnant – and with Daniel away at sea, she is all alone. When tragedy strikes, will Kitty and Dunbar’s come to her rescue?
Beatrice is in her forties, unmarried, and working in a job that exposes her to the harsh realities of poverty and sacrifice. She wonders whether the war might give her the opportunity to change lives for the better – including her own. But when she’s accused of a crime she didn’t commit, the future looks bleak… until Kitty makes a surprising suggestion.
Can the community around Dunbar’s hotel pull together and provide a beacon of hope and resilience, in the dark days of war?
A New Home at the Wartime Hotel is a heart-warming start to a brand new trilogy from Maisie Thomas. It follows three women as they navigate their way through the challenges of living through wartime whilst dealing with their own personal problems.
Bill Dunbar inherits Dunbar’s, the family hotel but when he is called up it falls to his wife Kitty to keep it running, that is until bailiffs take everything to cover Bill’s debts. Lily is a former chambermaid who finds herself back at Dunbar’s, despite thinking her life was about to go in a completely different direction. Beatrice lives a fairly unfulfilling life but thinks she can achieve more until a false accusation threatens to ruin her life.
The three women find themselves unexpectedly brought together and a friendship is born. I loved Kitty’s tenacious nature and her determination to adapt Dunbar’s to avoid losing it altogether. I also really liked Beatrice’s ideas to help children who care for relatives. I feel like there’s a lot more to come from Lily in the next book and I’m really intrigued to see which direction Kitty takes Dunbar’s in.
This is a delightful, cosy and easy to read book which transported me to Manchester in wartime. I enjoyed the focus on the hotel which felt a bit different to other sagas and I thought it was a lovely way to set up a new series from one of my favourite writers.
Maisie Thomas is the author of the Wartime Hotel series published by Boldwood. The stories concentrate on the importance of female friendship, especially when those friendships come about unexpectedly, and the ways in which women support one another through the highs and lows of everyday life in wartime. The books follow on from one another, but at the same time, each is complete in itself.
Maisie is also the author of the bestselling Railway Girls saga series about the brave women and girls who worked on Britain’s railways in WW2. She also writes as Susanna Bavin and Polly Heron. As Polly, she writes the 1920s saga series, The Surplus Girls, about young women striving for independence in the aftermath of the First World War. As Susanna she has written four stand-alone sagas (The Deserter’s Daughter, A Respectable Woman, The Sewing Room Girl and The Poor Relation) and a WW2 saga series, The Home Front Girls, about the lives of young women working in a salvage depot.
Maisie was born and brought up in Manchester, which provides the location for her novels. She now lives on the beautiful North Wales coast with her husband and their two rescue cats.