The Hotel Nantucket

The Hotel Nantucket (2022) was Elin Hildebrand’s 28th book and the first one I’ve read that’s she’s written. A good summer choice by my library book group, Hildebrand centers the story on 19-year old chambermaid, Grace Hadley, who died in 1922 in a fire that gutted the hotel and has haunted it since, hoping for someone to tell her story and bring justice to her death. In the present, a billionaire, Xavier Darling, has purchased the hotel, which has been abandoned for a while, and he refurbishes it with the plans to make it a destination again.

Xavier chooses Lizbet Keaton as the hotel’s general manager. She previously ran the front of house for a popular Nantucket restaurant with her long-term partner and chef, who she caught exchanging sexts with their wine distributor and immediately broke up with him, ending a 15-year relationship. So this is her chance to prove herself on her own. She assembles a small staff of both locals and those wanting to spend the summer on Nantucket, seeing to all of the details that make a hotel spectacular. Xavier has charged them with getting 5 keys from a popular travel blogger, who has never given 5 keys to any hotel, and she’s travelled all over the world and stayed at truly amazing places.

Using multiple perspectives, including that of the ghost Grace, who really personifies the hotel itself, we learn about the deceptions played and secrets held by the staff as the summer happens. Guests, including the travel blogger, and Xavier Darling himself, arrive, and the staff takes care of them. There’s romance and justice and people become unlikely friends.

It’s a satisfying summer read, and I did become intrigued by Nantucket. I had heard the name before, of course, but not having spent much time in New England, I had no context for it. It sounds pretty amazing. So while I enjoyed the book, I have a caveat.

I have to consider The Hotel Nantucket anti-fat biased for a few reasons. First, Hildebrand includes Lizbet’s post-breakup weight loss and exercise routine as a plot point and point of pride for her character, and contrasts it with that of her former partner, who is portrayed as a very large man who embarrasses himself wanting to get back together. Second, there is an emphasis on the characters’ perceived beauty, especially one character that was blackmailing someone, and there wasn’t really any descriptions of diversity in body size of the characters. I got the impression that Nantucket was a place that only socially-accepted “beautiful” people go, and that someone who looks like me (a short, fat, middle-aged woman who doesn’t dye my hair or wear makeup) would not be welcome. I could be wrong, but that’s the feeling I had after reading it. So if you make the choice to read it, be aware.