ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas

Posted on 15th January 2026 By Nicola

My review today is of Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel by Maisie Thomas which is published by Boldwood and is available now. My thanks to the author for sending me a copy for review.

My review of the first book in the Wartime Hotel series can be found here: A New Home at the Wartime Hotel.

Manchester, 1942.

When Kitty Dunbar was forced to confront her husband’s debts and close the family hotel, she transformed Dunbar’s into a storage business for bombed-out families. But with her daughter to support, and relishing her new independence, Kitty is keen to come up with more ways to use the once prestigious hotel.

Sharing her home are former chambermaid Lily, and kind-hearted welfare worker Beatrice, both haunted by past loss. Together, the three women create a new kind of family in the heart of the Manchester Blitz: one built on respect and resilience. When Kitty suggests hosting wedding receptions in the old dining room, her friends are happy and willing to lend a hand – and help to serve ‘Dunbar’s Wartime Wedding Punch’!

But when Lily meets a handsome doctor, and Beatrice comes face to face with an old flame, will hearts finally be mended, or broken once more?

While war rages around them, can these three women find the courage to keep fighting for their dreams?

Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel picks up where the first book in the trilogy, A New Home at the Wartime Hotel, left off. Kitty Dunbar is running the family hotel but as a storage facility during WWII, looking after household furniture for families who have been bombed out of their homes. She’s doing well, in fact the business is thriving, but her spendthrift husband still holds the purse strings. Then there’s Beatrice who made a sacrifice years ago only for it to come back to haunt her now and Lily whose world fell apart when she lost her baby son but now maybe there is hope on the horizon for her future.

I very much enjoyed this second book. I love to read about women stepping outside of their comfort zones and expected roles during wartime. Kitty, Beatrice and Lily formed an unexpected friendship in the first book and now it’s fully cemented, each becoming like a member of the family to the others. Maisie Thomas portrays each character really well and makes them likeable and strong. They pull together to deal with whatever life throws at them, adapting along the way. Kitty decides to allow functions in the hotel and the creation of Dunbars Wartime Wedding Punch sends many a happy couple on their way.

This is such a lovely series, full of warmth, hope and solidarity, and one which all saga lovers will enjoy. I’m looking forward to book three now to see how each woman’s story will end. Beatrice’s and Lily’s in particular didn’t go in the direction I thought they might in this book and so I’m keen to see what the future will hold for them. For Kitty, I wonder how on earth she will deal with her (very annoying) husband, Bill! I can’t wait to find out.

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.