The Hotel Nantucket

Elin Hilderbrand has made a name for herself writing beach reads that are set in Nantucket, the Massachusetts resort town where she has summered since childhood. Her books are quintessential examples of the genre, delivering escapism through acute local details and high relationship drama while centering character development and growth in her female protagonists.

Nantucket Island, which is 30 miles south of Cape Cod, is separated from the American mainland by water and is an ideal setting for a beach read owing to the seasonal shifts in its population. According to a census conducted in 2020, Nantucket’s year-round population is roughly 14,255, while in summer it increases over five-fold to about 80,000. This influx of newcomers and returning vacationers makes the summer ripe for transformation and drama. In addition to hotels that accommodate novelty-seekers, the presence of vacation homes—for example, those inhabited by the Winslows, Bicks, and Laytons in The Hotel Nantucket—allows for the establishment of a regular migratory community. The Hotel Nantucket features all three types of residents—permanent, returning, and new—which allows Hilderbrand to create a diverse cast of characters with varying levels of familiarity with the island.

However, as the novel focuses on hospitality workers, the short summer season, which the staff builds up to all year, is a high-pressure time. At the start of the novel, Xavier makes it clear that his investment in the hotel is a pilot project, and that the staff’s jobs are not guaranteed the following year unless they prove themselves in the three-month span. Hilderbrand enhances the drama and potential for failure through Xavier’s insistence that this new hotel, whose reputation is tarnished by a haunting, should win the five-key accolade from demanding travel journalist Shelly Carpenter.

The short summer spell also affects characters in their personal lives. For example, ex-partners Lizbet and JJ can use the season as a metric to measure their successes against each other. When Lizbet’s new Hotel Nantucket thrives while JJ’s seasoned Deck venture falters, it is a metaphor for how far Lizbet has developed post-breakup. However, the shortness of the high season also accelerates Lizbet’s romance with chef Mario Subiaco, as both know that they have a small window to get to know each other before Xavier potentially ends the terms of their employment. Lizbet must come to terms with her trust issues and dare to love again before the summer ends, or she loses a worthy man, potentially forever. Jaded front desk manager Alessandra Powell also aims to transform her life over the summer, hoping to transition from ephemeral serial mistress to a wealthy man’s spouse. As she shifts her attention from night visits to the hotel’s wealthy guests to the owner Xavier himself, she intends to swap a transitory lifestyle for more permanent security.

As Hilderbrand traces her characters’ journeys, she marks the different points in the summer. The novel opens with the hopeful awkwardness of June when the hotel is new and the influx of guests is slow. July comes with notoriety when Wanda’s ghost article comes out, and the hotel fills up. The story culminates in the melancholy final days of August, as the successful season is coming to an end and the future is still uncertain. With the end of high season and the mention of schoolbooks and pumpkin lattes, the characters’ thoughts turn to a metaphorical harvest as they assess what they gathered in their busy summer.

Ironically, as the narrative centers mainly on a hotel, this is a beach read without much beach action or relaxation. In fact, as June gives way to July and the hotel gets busier, the rhythms of the characters’ lives become frenetic rather than lazy. As Hilderbrand uses a third-person closed perspective to shadow the staff’s thoughts, we identify with them over their pampered customers and become more familiar with the hotel lobby and the details of cleaning rooms than with leisure spaces. However, Hilderbrand provides plenty of local color in her descriptions of locations and planned itineraries, alerting the reader to what is special about Nantucket’s heritage and natural surroundings. For example, when Lizbet first visits Mario’s place, “they step back in time” to a cottage that harks of “the good old days, that era in the 1950s and 1960s when properties were both loved and neglected, when summer homes were passed down through families” and smelled “of the sea” (178). Here, Hilderbrand evokes a sense of authenticity and evokes what made Nantucket a family seaside resort rather than the flashy place it has become in recent years. By extension, she alludes to the fact that Mario is looking to stay on the island and in Lizbet’s life rather than be a flash-in-the-pan visitor. On a metafictional level, the seasoned Hilderbrand reader gains a sense of homecoming, revisiting the setting of the author’s many fictional works while seeing it anew through a different story.

While Hilderbrand’s novel has all the enticing ingredients of a beach read, it has a deeper moral about community-building and welfare. Grace, the ghost who haunts the Hotel Nantucket, does so because her lover, hotel owner Jackson Benedict, did not sufficiently look out for her safety in the fire that took her life. Instead, he looked out for his ego and reputation. There is a similar motif at the end of the novel when absentee owner Xavier Darling threatens to sell the hotel to corporate interests after a personal romantic disappointment, thereby threatening to take away a project that has given the staff livelihoods, joy, and purpose.

The sense that the hotel is not merely a whimsical escape but an institution that is central to the community’s well-being is confirmed in Shelly Carpenter’s review, which praises the brilliant staff that made her family feel at home during a difficult time. Moreover, staffers like Edie and Lizbet both become confident and develop a healthy sense of entitlement during the summer. Arguably, Xavier’s distance from the renovation project, despite being its benefactor, numbs him to his decision’s selfishness. Nevertheless, it is up to the local community to compensate for his actions, and the well-endowed Paul Winslow and Magda English team up to purchase the hotel from Xavier and ensure that it continues to serve tourists and the community in the future. Making The Hotel Nantucket a lasting institution serves Hilderbrand’s project of returning to the island in each of her summer novels, as she shows how it is a place for building lives as well as escapism.