ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Dreams Come True at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas

Posted on 27th April 2026 By Nicola

Dreams Come True at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas is published by Boldwood and is available now. My thanks to the author for the review copy.

Manchester, 1943.

Kitty’s new venture, hosting wedding receptions at Dunbar’s Hotel, has got off to a flying start, and she’s looking to the future. With the tide of the war turning and victory on the distant horizon, Kitty is keen to keep her independence once the men come home. But will her spendthrift husband Bill agree to a divorce – and to letting her keep the business?

Beatrice’s work in welfare is hugely rewarding, and she loves the children’s clubs she runs at Dunbar’s. But when a spate of thefts breaks out locally, the police become involved. Could the children be to blame, or can Beatrice help discover the true culprits?

Former hotel maid Lily knows she still loves her estranged husband, Daniel. But can there be any chance of a reconciliation, when he discovers she is pregnant with another man’s baby?

After everything they’ve been through – the ups and downs of war, life and love – will the women of the wartime hotel finally get their happy ending?

Dreams Come True at the Wartime Hotel is the third book in this heartwarming trilogy and my favourite of the three as it rounds up every character’s story perfectly.

Kitty, Lily and Beatrice live at Dunbar’s Hotel with Abbie, Kitty’s daughter, and Mrs Ivy Dunbar, Kitty’s mother-in-law. Whilst the men are away at war, it’s the women who step forward on the home front. The feckless actions of Bill, Kitty’s husband, mean that she is running the hotel as a storage business and has also branched out into wedding and funeral receptions with the help of her friends and family.

The future for Kitty and Lily seems uncertain. The thought of Bill coming home and taking all that Kitty has built up is unthinkable to her, and Lily is pregnant with another man’s child so reconciliation with her husband seems an impossibility. Beatrice is content with her life working in welfare and running children’s clubs but she does sometimes feel like she has missed out on family life. What will the future hold for these three plucky women?

I loved reading this book and catching up with the characters I have so enjoyed reading about. I had hopes for the conclusion of both Beatrice’s and Lily’s stories and I was thrilled with the outcome for each, but with Kitty I thought it could only go one way and I was wrong. The author came up with a much better idea and I couldn’t have wished for more.

This whole trilogy has been a delight to read. It’s about strong women courageously forging their own way during wartime and doing a jolly good job of it. The stories are easy to read and flow beautifully whilst covering the hardships of life during conflict and the joys of romance and friendship. Highly recommended for all saga fans.

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.