Let Elin Hilderbrand—the Queen Of The Beach Read And The De Facto Queen Of Nantucket—Introduce You To The Island She Loves

Forbes

06-05-2025

Elin Hilderbrand Beowulf Sheehan
The island of Nantucket—located off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts—has been home to novelist Elin Hilderbrand for 32 years. To pay homage to the place she says she owes everything to, Hilderbrand has written a love letter to the island in the form of The Blue Book: A Must-See, Can't-Miss, Won't-Forget Guide to Nantucket , a guidebook that introduces (or, in some cases, reintroduces) the world to the place she holds so dear.
'I owe everything I have—my entire career, all of my success—I owe to this island,' she tells me about a week before the book's publication on May 6. 'And anytime I get a chance to give back, I take it.'
This includes giving back monetarily—donating to various Nantucket-based charities and nonprofits—and serving as the de facto ambassador for the island, or, in my words, the Queen of Nantucket (a label she eschews).
'I mean, I'm a champion for Nantucket,' she modestly tells me. 'I would never in a million years call myself the Queen of Nantucket. I mean, that's—there are people far more important here.' Case in point? In Hilderbrand's words, the woman on the island who fixes everyone's computers, a service Hilderbrand herself employed when her own laptop broke the week before we spoke. ('If she hadn't been able to fix it, 150 pages of my new book would be gone, and I have to start over,' Hilderbrand says. Don't worry—the work was salvaged.)
"The Blue Book" cover by Elin Hilderbrand Little, Brown and Company
But , Hilderbrand admits, while she may balk at the Queen of Nantucket label, 'as far as promoting it nationwide, I just do the best that I can to make sure that—I mean, Nantucket itself never disappoints,' she says. 'The island itself is so charming, so beautiful, so friendly. I raised my three kids here.'
In addition to giving back to Nantucket-based charitable organizations, Hilderbrand has become an economic driver for the place, promoting island businesses by putting scenes featuring the island in her novels. In 2022, she wrote the novel Hotel Nantucket , and had the idea that the hotel would give out a recommendation guide of the spots to see while visiting there—the restaurants to visit (and the restaurants to avoid), the beaches to hit up, the shops to patronize. But, while that recommendation guide was written from the hotel's perspective, there was still something missing—a book about what to do and see in Nantucket written in Hilderbrand's own voice.
'I need to be clear—this is not a comprehensive guidebook,' she tells me as birds chirp in the background on a late April day. 'It's my personalized, curated recommendations. And so what's not in it is as important as what is in it, because there are some tourist-y places on Nantucket that I might not feel are worth the time and money, but everywhere that I do mention is such a highlight.'
A view of the Brant Point Lighthouse in Nantucket, Massachusetts on April 25, 2020. (Photo by Maddie ...) Getty Images
Hilderbrand employed the services of Meredith Hanson to do The Blue Book 's illustrations, with the book named as such because a signature color of Nantucket interiors is hydrangea blue, with white as an accent color. The book, she said, is written for those planning to visit and those who hope to visit someday, 'or maybe they just want a piece of Nantucket to put on their coffee table or keep in their bedroom,' she says. It's meant to be a keepsake, she says. Wedding planners have been buying up copies of The Blue Book to give to their clients as they plan weddings here, as well as travel agents and 'people that are in the business of bringing people to Nantucket,' Hilderbrand tells me.
In addition to The Blue Book 's release, Hilderbrand's so-called Queenship of Nantucket is further cemented by the Highline—the ferry company on the island—creating a specific Elin Hilderbrand tour based off of her recommendations in The Blue Book . Even sweeter? Hilderbrand's sister Heather will be running the tour three days a week for two hours beginning May 7, the day after the book's publication, all the way through October. ('She's so excited,' Hilderbrand says of Heather.)
'I feel it's going to be so popular because then, people can get the whole experience,' Hilderbrand says. 'They get on The Blue Book tour, and they can see all the places in person and then pick and choose where they want to spend more time.'
Hilderbrand's love affair with Nantucket began in 1993, when she was living in New York City with her boyfriend. After they broke up, she told him he could have their apartment in the city for the summer, and 'I'm going to go away for the summer and I'm going to go to Nantucket,' she recalls to me, over three decades later. She arrived on the island, rented a room in a house 'and had just the best summer ever,' she tells me. She bought a 10-speed bike. She fell in love with her roommates, and the man who would eventually become her husband. 'It was a magical, out of a book summer,' Hilderbrand says. 'And I thought to myself, 'Okay, I never want to leave.' And I got home and my ex-boyfriend was in the apartment and he said, 'How was it?' And I started to cry. And he goes, 'Okay, I take it you had a good summer.''
Two guests sit in beach chairs on September 24, 2015 at Wauwinet Inn overlooking Nantucket Bay on ... More Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. (Photo by) Getty Images
Once she got back to the city, all she could think about was going back. At this time, Hilderbrand was a teacher, so at the end of the school year, 'I sold all my furniture on the street in Manhattan and moved to Nantucket permanently in 1994.' She and Chip, the man she met that fateful summer of 1993 and later married, raised their kids on Nantucket. Though they're no longer together, both of them are still on the island and are good friends, Hilderbrand tells me, 'and each have our own little piece of Nantucket, and all my kids love it.'
Hilderbrand grew up outside of Philadelphia, and, when all of her friends used to travel to the Jersey Shore for the summer, her father and stepmother took her to Cape Cod. 'And I loved it, loved it, loved it,' she tells me. Her father died in a plane crash when she was a junior in high school, and suddenly 'those summers came to an end,' she remembers. That summer—the summer she was 17—she got a job at a factory that made Halloween costumes instead of heading to the Cape.
'I was so miserable, Rachel,' she tells me. 'And I was like, 'Okay, the only thing that's going to make this better is I'm going to promise myself that, in the future, I'm going to create a life where I can spend every summer at the beach.' So it was always my goal to get back.'
Elin Hilderbrand stands for a portrait in her home on September 27, 2024 in Nantucket, ... More Massachusetts. (Photo by Emily Mentes for The Washington Post via Getty Images) The Washington Post via Getty Images
And so that's exactly what Hilderbrand did—she built a life for herself that allowed her to not just spend every summer at the beach, but every day of the year there, if she so chooses. 'Nantucket is unlike anywhere else in the world,' she says, noting that it's 30 miles out to sea, and only accessible by boat or plane.
'In the summertime, of course, it attracts a very wealthy clientele, and where you get a wealthy clientele, you get a lot of interesting stories—a lot of drama,' she says. (Perfect fodder for an Elin Hilderbrand beach read.) There is a historically preserved downtown, cobblestone streets, no chain stores—only independently-owned shops, restaurants and boutiques. Window boxes are full of flowers. Flags snap in the wind. There are old churches and 50 miles of undeveloped, pristine beach. And Hilderbrand felt compelled to share the place that has molded her into the woman she is today with the world.
Hilderbrand's recommendations in The Blue Book are vast and wide, but how would she spend a perfect summer day in Nantucket? She's exercise first thing in the morning, she tells me—a run to the beach, or she'd take a barre class, which she does every day in the summer. For breakfast, she'd head to Lemon Press on Main Street ('there's always a line, but worth it,' she says). Then, she'd shop downtown—Mitchell's, Millie and Grace—and grab sandwiches from Something Natural and head to the beach (Steps Beach, to be more specific). For dinner, she'd go to the Sandbar, 'which is right down the beach from Steps,' she says. 'And it's like a feet in the sand—they often have music, and it's like fish sandwiches and burgers and fish tacos and fabulous drinks. And it's super fun.'
After Sandbar, she'd head to the Club Car ('they have a piano bar and you can sing') or the Chicken Box ('the one sort of dive-y—I guess you'd call it a nightclub—but it's like a bar that always has live music and everybody goes, and it's just the greatest place to end the night').
Elin Hilderbrand attends the Los Angeles premiere of Netflix's "The Perfect Couple" at The Egyptian ... More Theatre Hollywood on September 4, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Araya Doheny/WireImage) WireImage
It's no surprise that, after Hotel Nantucket came out in 2022, the island gave her the tourism award. As celebrated an ambassador as Hilderbrand is—the island is generally always the setting of her 30 novels, and in The Blue Book she calls Nantucket her muse—she isn't without detractors, she tells me. 'If you did a random selection of people, there would also be people who say that I'm ruining it because now all these people are coming,' she says. (This only intensified after Netflix adapted her 2018 novel The Perfect Couple into a miniseries starring Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber, released in 2024.)
Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman attend the Los Angeles premiere of The Perfect Couple at The ... More Egyptian Theatre Hollywood on September 4, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo byfor Netflix) Getty Images for Netflix
'I would say that Elin and her books have increased the visitation to Nantucket, and also raised the general visibility of Nantucket across her readership and viewership of the adapted Netflix show,' said Peter Burke, executive director of the Nantucket Island Chamber of Commerce. Pointing to a specific example, Burke tells me about the Elin Hilderbrand Weekend, which 'ran for a few years every January,' he says. That time of year on the island is otherwise 'typically quiet,' he says, and those guests for that weekend not only patronized hotels but also retail and dining locations, which was only beneficial for the island during 'an otherwise quiet time of the year.'
'I can safely say that we receive multiple calls per week from individuals looking for information about Nantucket who are planning their first trip to the island after reading about it as the backdrop in many Hilderbrand novels,' Burke adds. 'One of the unique features of Elin's books is the integration of real island locations into her novels. Visiting readers can—for the most part and allowing room for creative freedom—go to businesses and beaches that their favorite characters have enjoyed.'
Of all the projects Hilderbrand could have taken on for her next book, why write a guide to the place she lives and loves? She wants people to 'put Nantucket on their bucket list,' she says. 'And I can say to them, it will not disappoint. I'm not blowing it up. Every bit is great and even greater than I described, because there is no other place like it. Even in the rain, even in the fog, it is the most beautiful place—an American treasure, and everybody is welcome.'