Pool Area

AT HOME WITH

Elin Hilderbrand

Inside the best-selling author’s beloved Nantucket ‘money pit.’

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By Addie Morfoot Photographs by Winnie Au

July 10, 2026

The author Elin Hilderbrand purchased a shingle-style, 2,940-square-foot home on the island of Nantucket in 2015 and then spent seven years — and over $2 million — renovating it.

“It was the money pit,” said Ms. Hilderbrand. “I have replaced every brick, stone, stick of wood and shingle on this house.”

Ms. Hilderbrand, 56, has lived on Nantucket, located off Cape Cod, Mass., for over three decades. She raised her three children there and used the island’s pristine beaches, expensive restaurants and the town’s cobblestone streets as the setting for nearly all of her 31 novels.

After publishing her first book, “The Beach Club,” in 2000, Ms. Hilderbrand generated at least one escapist novel every year for 24 years. She has sold more than 20 million books worldwide.

Ms. Hilderbrand said writing beach reads was not her intention after graduating from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1998.

“I just wanted to write novels that were set in Nantucket,” she said.

Built in 2016, the 20-by-40-foot pool is surrounded by a 5-foot, double fence with a planter. Last September, Ms. Hilderbrand hosted a dinner party at the pool for cast and crew of “The Five Star Weekend.” It’s the second book by Ms. Hilderbrand to be adapted for the screen. The first was Ms. Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel “The Perfect Couple,” which Netflix released as a mini-series by the same name in 2024.

Starring Jennifer Garner, “The Five Star Weekend,” which was shot in Nantucket and Los Angeles, began streaming on Peacock on Thursday. Ms. Hilderbrand executive produced both series but did not write the screenplays.

“I think seven or eight other books of mine are in development, and my approach, which I would never change, is the book exists,” explained Ms. Hilderbrand. “I will talk to the writer before they get started. It’s their job to turn it into compelling television. I have no interest in writing television.”

Ms. Hilderbrand writes all of her novels longhand on a legal notepad before transcribing them onto a computer. She likes to write in the living room while lying on a chaise longue that faces the pool.

“In the mornings it’s just so beautiful because there is this gentle early morning light,” said Ms. Hilderbrand. “I have never written in an office.”

The living room was renovated in 2021. Ms. Hilderbrand’s sister-in-law, Lisa Hilderbrand, an interior designer based in New Canaan, Conn., decorated the entire house.

“We had to walk that fine line of having it feel like a Nantucket home but not having it be a beach house because we live here full time,” said Ms. Hilderbrand.

When she’s not enjoying the morning light in the living room, Ms. Hilderbrand is usually chatting with her youngest child, Shelby Cunningham, 20.

“She literally tells me about every single interaction she had at work or during the day,” said Ms. Hilderbrand.

Some of those conversations led to a mother-daughter two-book series based on Ms. Cunningham’s experiences at the boarding school St. George’s School in Rhode Island. Ms. Hilderbrand and her daughter co-wrote the first book, “The Academy,” which was published in 2025. In September, the sequel, “The Thoroughbreds,” will be released.

“There was no chance I could have written these two books by myself,” said Ms. Hilderbrand. “I didn’t go to boarding school. I’m not a teenager, and Gen Z has such a different way of communicating.”

“She had characters wearing Converse and listening to the Rolling Stones,” said Ms. Cunningham. “It was so cringe. I was like, ‘No, Mom. They are wearing Golden Goose and listening to house music.’”

A creative writing major at the University of Miami, Ms. Cunningham doesn’t have plans to write another novel. She wants to be a television producer.

Ms. Hilderbrand stores some copies of her novels on the top of a built-in bookshelf off the dining room. Her favorite book she’s written is “28 Summers.”

“It was a magical experience writing it,” said Ms. Hilderbrand. “I think because a lot of it was my own experience living in Nantucket.”

A first edition of J.D. Salinger’s 1961 novel “Franny and Zooey” sits prominently in the middle of the bookshelf. Ms. Hilderbrand’s ex-husband gave it to the author on her 50th birthday.

“It’s my favorite novel of all time,” said Ms. Hilderbrand. “I read it when I was in high school, and I was just enamored with the writing. I found it so meaningful.”

Ms. Hilderbrand’s 2024 novel, “Swan Song,” was her 27th and final book set on Nantucket.

“I always said, my job was to do the same thing every year completely differently, and that was hard,” she said. “I also ran out of ideas.”

In addition to the ample space, Ms. Hilderbrand liked the kitchen when she first took a tour of the home back in 2015.

“Even though I have completely renovated it, I liked its bones and the stove,” the author said.

The La Cornue 60-inch range came with the house. Ms. Hilderbrand, who “cooks all of the time,” said that she uses the apparatus almost every day.

Ms. Hilderbrand, unbeknown to her agent and her publisher, is currently at work writing her 33rd novel, “The Novelists.”

About four writers whose careers go in different directions after meeting at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Ms. Hilderbrand has been contemplating the story “for a long time.”

“I really wanted to write about writers and professional jealousy,” said Ms. Hilderbrand.

A handwritten note from a fan expressing gratitude for Ms. Hildebrand’s writing rests beside the author’s legal pad.

Ms. Hilderbrand reads a few lines: “You were there for me for my first miscarriage and there for me for the four after that. You were with me when the doctor told me that we should think about other ways to grow our family and then you were there when the doctor came in and told me months later that we were in fact expecting a healthy baby girl.”

Ms. Hilderband stopped reading and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, before gaining composure. “It’s so unbelievable to me that she read the books in her hardest hours and could escape.”

Along one wall of the kitchen, nine Ted Muehling egg and disc candlesticks sit below a photograph by James Ogilvy.

When she was writing a book a year, Ms. Hilderbrand would rent an apartment in Boston for three months so she could be alone and finish each novel.

“I would light these candles and work by candlelight and pretend I was Emily Dickinson,” she said.

A few years ago, Ms. Hilderbrand and Ms. Cunningham bought five framed photos of matchbooks featuring restaurants that are meaningful to Ms. Hilderbrand at a local store downtown.

“I said to Shelby, ‘We have to get the matchboxes for the stairs,’” said Ms. Hilderbrand.

Then she called Lisa, her sister-in-law and interior designer, to show her the photos. She told Ms. Hilderbrand to buy 40 of them.

“All of a sudden it went from being a $300 or $400 thing to a thousands-of-dollars thing,” she said. “But I just love it because it’s fun. I have a relationship to every single restaurant.”

A powder room covered in custom wallpaper designed by artist Meredith Hanson sits off the kitchen. The wallpaper features illustrations of Ms. Hilderbrand, her children and various locations that often appear in the author’s Nantucket-based books.

“It was Lisa’s idea,” the author said. “I love it.”

Beach reads and “chick lit” novels like Ms. Hilderbrand’s are often dismissed and overlooked by the literary community. But after 26 years of writing and publishing, Ms. Hilderbrand is just fine with how people choose to describe her books.

“There have been times when I’ve been like, ‘Do not dismiss me,’ because writing a book is really hard. It doesn’t matter what kind of book it is,” she said. “But to be able to write books that allow people to escape and gives them a chance to read something that is taking them away from whatever circumstances they find themselves, that is the thing that has been my purpose.”

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