Good, and better than you dared expect — because you had stopped hoping for it, or never hoped for it at all. An unhoped-for success, an unhoped-for reply, an unhoped-for second chance.

Look closely at the shape of the meaning, because it is not simply 'not hoped for'. The word carries real warmth: the thing arrived, it was welcome, and the pleasure comes exactly from the fact that you had given up. Compare 'unexpected', which is neutral — unexpected news can be terrible. Unhoped-for news is always good news.

This is a written, rather literary word. You will find it in novels, in speeches, in obituaries and in careful journalism; you will almost never hear a friend say it over lunch. In speech people say 'more than I hoped for', 'better than I ever expected', or simply 'I couldn't believe it'.

It is nearly always used before a noun (an unhoped-for gift), not after a verb; 'the gift was unhoped-for' is possible but sounds stiff. Keep the hyphen when it sits before the noun.