Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand

A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. What begins as a graduation night celebration ends in tragedy after a horrible car crash leaves the driver, Penny Alistair, dead, and her twin brother in a coma. The other passengers, Penny’s boyfriend, Jake, and her friend Demeter, are physically unhurt–but the emotional damage is overwhelming. Questions linger about what happened before Penny took the wheel. As summer unfolds, startling truths are revealed-secrets kept, promises broken, hearts betrayed.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Hospitalisation for a coma
  • Car accident

Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand

The Carmichaels and Grahams have gathered on Nantucket for a wedding. Plans are being made according to the wishes of the bride s late mother, who left behind the notebook: specific instructions for every detail of her youngest daughter s future nuptials. Everything should be falling into place for the beautiful event but in reality, things are far from perfect. While the couple-to-be are quite happy, their loved ones find their own lives crumbling. In the days leading up to the wedding, love will be questioned, scandals will arise, and hearts will be broken and healed.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Divorce
  • Death of a mother from cancer recounted

A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand

Claire Danner Crispin, mother of four young children and nationally renowned glassblower, bites off more than she can chew when she agrees to co-chair a huge benefit concert on Nantucket. Claire is asked to chair the Nantucket Children Summer Gala, at least in part, because she is the former high school sweetheart of world famous rock star, Max West. Max agrees to play the benefit and it looks like smooth sailing for Claire—until she agrees to create a “museum-quality” piece of glass for the auction, pre-emptorily offers her best friend the catering job, goes nose-to-nose with her Manhattan socialite co-chair, and begins a “good-hearted” affair with the charity’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity

The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand

With rumours of infidelity straining Greg and Tess MacAvoy’s marriage, the couple head out on their sailboat one early summer day to celebrate their wedding anniversary, hoping the roughest waters are behind them. But in an accident off Nantucket, they mysteriously drown, leaving behind two small children as well as three couples who have long been their closest friends. Tragedy brings to the surface long-simmering conflicts and emotions, and the MacAvoys’ six grieving friends find themselves unprepared for the revelation of secret upon secret as they struggle to answer the: What happened to Greg & Tess?

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Death of friends in a boating accident

Here’s to Us by Elin Hilderbrand

Celebrity chef Deacon Thorpe has always been a force of nature with an insatiable appetite for life. But after that appetite contributes to Deacon’s shocking death in his favourite place on earth, a ramshackle Nantucket summer cottage, his (messy, complicated) family is reeling. Now Deacon’s three wives, his children, and his best friend gather on the island he loved to say farewell. The three very different women have long been bitter rivals, each wanting to claim the primary place in Deacon’s life and his heart. But as they slowly let go of the resentments they’ve held onto for years and remember the good times, secrets are… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Death of an ex-husband & father

The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand

48-year-old Nantucketer Dabney Kimball Beech has always had a gift for matchmaking. Some call her ability mystical, while others – like her husband, celebrated economist John Boxmiller Beech, and her daughter, Agnes, who is clearly engaged to the wrong man – call it meddlesome, but there’s no arguing with her results: With 42 happy couples to her credit and all of them still together, Dabney has never been wrong about romance. Never, that is, except in the case of herself and Clendenin Hughes, the green-eyed boy who took her heart with him long ago when he left… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity

Emma of 83rd Street by Audrey Belleza and Emily Harding

Beautiful, clever, and rich, Emma Woodhouse has lived twenty-three years in her tight-knit Upper East Side neighbourhood with very little to distress or vex her…that is, until her budding matchmaking hobby results in her sister’s marriage—and subsequent move downtown. Now, with her sister gone and all her friends traveling abroad, Emma must start her final year of grad school grappling with an entirely new emotion: boredom. So when she meets Nadine, a wide-eyed Ohio transplant with a heart of gold and drugstore blonde highlights to match, Emma not only sees a potential new friend but a new project. If only her overbearing… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Attempted sexual assault (on-page)
  • Death of a mother recounted

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

When Mallory Blessing’s son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he’s not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It’s the late spring of 2020 and Jake’s wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother’s bachelor party. Cooper’s friend from college, Jake… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity

The Hotel Nantucket by Elin Hilderbrand

After a tragic fire in 1922 that killed 19-year-old chambermaid, Grace Hadley, The Hotel Nantucket descended from a gilded age gem to a mediocre budget-friendly lodge to inevitably an abandoned eyesore — until it’s purchased and renovated top to bottom by London billionaire, Xavier Darling.  Xavier hires Nantucket sweetheart Lizbet Keaton as his general manager, and Lizbet, in turn, pulls together a charismatic, if inexperienced, staff who share the vision of turning the fate of the hotel around. They face challenges in getting along with one another (and with the guests), in overcoming the hotel’s… Read more.

Goodreads

Trigger and Content Warnings

  • Infidelity
  • Sexual assault
  • Eyeball trauma
  • Miscarriage recounted
  • Fire
  • Death of a pet