Elin Hilderbrand Honors Her Nantucket Home in Newly Published Guidebook

It's a place she's called home for more than three decades. Novelist Elin Hilderbrand has immortalized the love and lore for Nantucket in a new work, “The Blue Book: A Must-See, Can't-Miss, Won't-Forget Guide to Nantucket.” The book published on Tuesday, May 6.

“I owe everything I have — my entire career, all of my success — I owe to this island,” she told Forbes' Rachel Burchfield. “And anytime I get a chance to give back, I take it.”

Hilderbrand's unabashed love for Nantucket is evidenced by the many Nantucket charitable organizations she's contributed to over the years. She's also helped promote business to the island off the coast of Cape Cod by featuring Nantucket in her novels.

In 2022, Hilderbrand wrote "Hotel Nantucket." While writing the novel, she envisioned the hotel providing a recommendation guide of the spots to see while visiting — the restaurants to dine at, the beaches to soak in the sea and the sand, and the shops to explore. While this recommendation guide was written from the hotel's perspective, she sensed a void — a guide for what to do and see in Nantucket through her own voice.

“This is not a comprehensive guidebook,” Hilderbrand quickly pointed out to Forbes. “It's my personalized, curated recommendations. And so what's not in it is as important as what is in it, because there are some tourist-y places on Nantucket that I might not feel are worth the time and money, but everywhere that I do mention is such a highlight.”

Hilderbrand said she intended the book for those who plan to visit and those who hope to visit Nantucket someday. “Maybe they just want a piece of Nantucket to put on their coffee table or keep in their bedroom,” she said.