5 Elin Hilderbrand top books
1. Summer of ‘69
Summer of 69 is an intriguing drama novel written by Elin Hilderbrand that has spent significant time on the Newyork Times bestseller list.
The novel showcases the personal and intertwining struggles of the Levins. The setting is a historic home in downtown Nantucket owned by Exalta, who is the mother of Kate Levin.
Kate Levin is a mother of 4, with three of her children - Blair, Kirby, and Tiger from her first marriage while Jessie, only 13 years old, is from her second marriage to David Levin.
Every year, the children have looked forward to spending their summer in their grandmother's home but summer this year, 1969, is a chaotic one for them.
Blair is stranded in Boston as she can't travel. Why? She is pregnant with twins. Middle sister Kirby has been arrested while protesting the war in Boston. She wants to be independent and thus take a job on the rival island of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard.
Tiger is deployed overseas, to be precise, in Vietnam, and their youngest sister Jessie feels that she has been marooned in the house with her grandmother and her mother, whose drinking has accelerated after her son was sent overseas.
As the summer moves ahead, events happen such as Ted Kennedy driving his car off a narrow bridge in Chappaquiddick, and Apollo 11 landing on the moon.
Along with this, the Levins experience chaos and upheaval in their own lives.
2. The Perfect Couple
It’s Otis-Winbury wedding in the summer on Nantucket Island. The groom's parents have left no stone unturned in making this wedding a truly lavish one by hosting it at their oceanfront property.
But just hours before the wedding, the dead body of a maid-of-honor is discovered in the Nantucket harbor. The chief of police arrives and in his eyes, everybody attending the wedding is a suspect.
He interrogates the bride, the groom, the groom’s mother, and a member of his own family.
As he digs deeper into solving the murder mystery, he discovers surprising truths and revelations.
3. 28 Summers
Mallory Blessing is dying and on her deathbed, she asks her son Link to call a number. The person who answers on the other side is Jake McCloud.
Yes, Jake McCloud, whose bigshot US Senator wife Ursula DeGournsey is running for the US Presidential election.
The story starts in the summer of 93 when Mallory who has just inherited a beach cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, hosts a bachelor party for his brother Cooper.
Comes to the party Jake McCloud who is a friend of Cooper from his college days at John Hopkins.
Mallory and Jake develop a bond at the party that is going to last for some time, to be precise, their love will persevere for the time that you can easily draw from the title of this novel.
However, when they met Jake was already taken by a glamorous but coldhearted lady Ursula DeGournsey.
Hilderbrand has written an annual-one weekend-secret-lovers novel that is inspired by the 1978 movie, Same time, Same year in which describes beautifully the romantic path from 1993 to 2020 and at the same time explores the complexities arising from such a relationship.
4. Barefoot
Barefoot is about three women, Brenda, Vicki, and Melanie who set foot on the Nantucket island on a June day that is more or less an escape route for them.
Vicki is battling late-stage lung cancer, she has arrived with her two sons. Brenda, the elder sister is running away from a work scandal of having an illicit affair with a student.
Melanie who has become pregnant in the 8th vitro attempt discovered that her husband is having an extra-marital affair when she tells about it to Vicki, she is invited by her to the island.
Vicki wants good supervision for her boys and after the first day went not as they planned in this area, they hire outside help in the form of a 22-year-old local Josh Flynn.
Hilderbrand beautifully weaves the story of 4 people in this warm Nantucket novel characterized by the lively telling of the bond between Vicki and her boys which gets too emotional as she comes closer to her last day.
5. The Island
Elin Hilderbrand brings in four women of the Cousins family in her 2010 novel The Island which is characterized by dramatic upheavals after the cancellation of a wedding.
Birdie Cousins is excited about her elder daughter Chess’s wedding, she is preparing excitingly for it. But her expectations topple when she gets a late-night phone call from Chess, informing her that she has called off her engagement.
To add pepper to her wound, Birdie unwillingly takes a break from her first shot at romance after her 30-year-old marriage came to an end recently.
Chess is also not spared, as something worse strikes her now shoving her into despair.
Birdie seeks help from her younger daughter Tate and her sister India.
Together they rush to the nearby beautiful Tuckerneck Island where they think that having no phone, or no television would help them escape the upheavals.
But can your getaway to a remote island with no traces of technology be peaceful when, at the same place, you also have your ex-lovers and long-kept secrets?
Will the chaos in their lives abate by the end of the summer? Will the seekers of love get love? Find out in this warm another-Nantucket novel by Elin Hilderbrand.
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