It’s a real privilege to be trusted with reviewing for My Weekly. This time I’m delighted to share my thoughts on The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson.

Published by Hodder on 17th February 2022, The Little Wartime Library is available for purchase through the links here.

The Little Wartime Library

Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While the world remains at war, in East London Clara has created the country’s only underground library, built over the tracks in the disused Bethnal Green tube station. Down here a secret community thrives: with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café and a theatre offering shelter, solace and escape from the bombs that fall above.

Along with her glamorous best friend and library assistant Ruby Munroe, Clara ensures the library is the beating heart of life underground. But as the war drags on, the women’s determination to remain strong in the face of adversity is tested to the limits when it seems it may come at the price of keeping those closest to them alive.

Based on true events, The Little Wartime Library is a gripping and heart-wrenching page-turner that remembers one of the greatest resistance stories of the war.

My Review of The Little Wartime Library

My full review of The Little Wartime Library can be found online on the My Weekly website here.

However, here I can say that The Little Wartime Library is a thoroughly immersive, engaging story that celebrates the wonder of books and the lives of extra-ordinary ordinary people through a meticulously researched historical setting. I thought it was wonderful.

Do visit My Weekly to read my full review here.

About Kate Thompson

Kate Thompson was born in London in 1974, and worked as a journalist for twenty years on women’s magazines and national newspapers. She now lives in Sunbury with her husband, two sons and a Lurcher called Ted. After ghost writing five memoirs, Kate moved into fiction. Kate’s first non-fiction social history documenting the forgotten histories of East End matriarchy, The Stepney Doorstep Society, was published in 2018 by Penguin. Her seventh novel, The Little Wartime Library is published by Hodder & Stoughton.

For further information, visit Kate’s website, follow her on Twitter @katethompson380 or find her on Facebook and Instagram.