The Hotel Nantucket

By Elin Hilderbrand
Little, Brown and Company, 2022, 447 pages

Reviewed by Ted Streuli
August 8, 2022

One of the joys of “The Hotel Nantucket” is Erin Hildebrand’s ability to deliver a beach book without the reader having to pull up stakes and find sand.

Credit Hildebrand’s skill at providing a clear sense of place that takes readers from watching what’s left of their backyard azaleas broil in the pervasive July heat to the crisp Massachusetts island where one imagines all travel is by bicycle, all the clothes are fluttering cotton and the cool breeze is tinged with salt.

That’s where local favorite, Lizbet Keaton, who adeptly runs the front-of-house for her chef-boyfriend’s restaurant, finds herself scorned and in immediate need of a new vocation. She impulsively applies to be the general manager of the soon-to-be reopened Hotel Nantucket, a historic gem gone to seed and abandoned.

Luckily for Lizbet, an absentee British billionaire has purchased the hotel and is bringing it back to life with spare-no-expense enthusiasm. As Hilderbrand is prone to do, the story unfolds through multiple points of view. Lizbet’s, of course, leads the charge, struggling to let go of her cheating SOB of an ex while feeling her way into a relationship with an even better chef and nervously getting the hotel up, running and filled. A just- divorced, all-summer guest checks in with her two children, gets upgraded to a suite, and finds romance with the hotel’s down-on-his-luck night auditor while her very young son schools the hotel’s guests on a lobby chessboard, and her daughter sets out to solve the mystery of the hotel’s ghost.

That ghost, another Hotel Nantucket narrator, is Hadley Grace, a chambermaid who was killed in a hotel fire in 1922. Hadley is hauntingly charming and Hiderbrand uses the character as a third-party observer in places no living third party could observe. That provides some character insights that add a bit of depth through a vehicle that doesn’t come off quite as contrived as it sounds.

Could one make the case that Hadley is a metaphor for the hotel? That she represents its refusal to die, no matter how bad the circumstance, and that her newfound enthusiasm mirrors the hotel’s rebirth? One could, but that would be a load of crap. Hilderbrand doesn’t write the sort of book 10th-grade English teachers will be including in their syllabi 50 years from now. What she writes is a damn fine beach read with likable characters, plenty of plot and outstanding place-setting.

The bathrooms are the most spectacular Jill has ever seen in real life. Each one has a shower tiled with oyster shells, a hatbox toilet in a separate water closet, and a slipper tub, the base of which is painted the hotel’s signature hydrangea blue.

“But the secret to success for any bathroom,” Lizbet says to Jill, “isn’t how it looks; it’s how it makes the guest look.” She flips a switch. Surrounding the long rectangular mirror over the double vanity is a soft halo light. “See how flattering?”

Jill and Lizbet gaze at themselves in the mirror like a couple of teenagers. It’s true, Jill thinks; she has never looked dewier than she does standing in the bathroom of suite 217.

But wait! There’s more! It’s not all about hydrangea-blue throws and a free minibar. This is Nantucket, after all. Ishmael could walk through that door at any minute.

As soon as Jill steps through the grand front doors, her jaw drops. Hanging from the vaulted ceiling of the lobby is the skeleton of an antique whaling boat that has been ingeniously repurposed into a statement chandelier. The ceiling’s beams, salvaged from the original structure, lend the room a sense of history. There are double-wide armchairs upholstered in hydrangea blue (which Jill soon learns is the hotel’s signature color), suede tufted ottomans, and low tables that tastefully display books and games (backgammon, checkers, and four marble chess sets). The far corner of the room is anchored by a white baby grand piano. On the large wall next to the front desk hangs an enormous James Ogilvy photograph of the Atlantic off Sankaty Head that succeeds in bringing the ocean into the hotel.

The Hotel Nantucket’s front desk is managed by the mysterious, conniving, exotically beautiful

Alessandra and sweet Edie, who is keeping her own embarrassing secret, as is the ultra-privileged, Lacoste-clad Chad, who is doing a summer of self-imposed penance on the housekeeping staff.

The story is about letting go of the past and embracing the future, but the reading experience is about letting go of your environment and visiting Nantucket in the summer. There’s enough going on in the many subplots to keep the pages turning and the sense of place is remarkable. By the last chapter, readers will feel as though they’ve spent the summer at the hotel too and will have a tinge of regret as the summer ends, the hotel closes for the season and they’re forced to return to those crisping azaleas.

The characters could be deeper, which might be the result of having so many of them. It’s not clear why Lizbet and the hotel chef fall for one another, nor is the two-dimensional hotel owner’s motivation for his wanton spending as solid as one might hope.

Every city has a hotel like the Hotel Nantucket, a re-polished jewel resurrected from the blight and saved from the recklessness of the Urban Renewal Authority. They all have a ghost, though few as charming as Hadley, and they all come back to life with enthusiastic general managers and a ballyhooed chef in the kitchen. That makes the setting easy to imagine, which helps readers feel at home there for the summer.

“The Hotel Nantucket” offers a pleasant summer getaway that’s worth the cover price. Chill yourself a glass of rosé, take a trip to Nantucket, and quit worrying about the damn azaleas.