Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't Put This One Down
Review: After having loved Hilderbrand's first book, The Beach Club, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Nantucket Nights. This book did not dissapoint. Despite having fewer characters, fewer pages, and fewer parrallel stories, this book was a far more complex book then her first. Aside from that the two are completely different entities, for which Ms. Hilderbrand should be commended. Too often, authors get burdened by publisher deadlines and churn out formulary stories, but not her.This is an intricately woven story of family, of friendship, and of our perceptions of the truth. It is the story of instincts and judgements, and of identity. Kayla, the story's protagonist, is a complex woman who struggles with insecurity in her marriage, and insecurity with who she is. She identifies herself as a mother, a wife, and a friend until the story unravels and all of that comes into question. This is the story of three unlike women who, for twenty years, get together one night of Labor Day weekend for a ritualistic midnight swim, truth telling and end of Summer celebratory night. Well, on the twentieth anniversary of this night the unspeakable happens and their friendship -- amongst so many other things -- becomes unravelled when one of the women disappears before sharing a dark secret. As Kayla searches for the truth about that secret, she begins to learn things about her friends and her family that she never would have imagined. As the pages turn towards the end, the reader is drawn in and Kayla learns so much about perception versus reality. She learns about herself, her family and who she has to be in order to render the strength to move on. This book is fantastic, and I cannot wait to read more by this talented author. If you want a fast but intelligent and interesting read that delves into the human psyche and relationships, pick up one of her books. You will be captivated.
Rating: 
Summary: Made me homesick!!!
Review: As a former 10 year resident of Nantucket and reader of the author's previous book that had the island as the setting, I was a bit skeptical because I wasn't crazy about the last one but this book I couldn't put down and read it in one day! Now the only problem is waiting two years for the next....
Rating:
Summary: Gave me the Nantucket Homesick Blues
Review: As a former resident of Nantucket and not so enthusiastic reader of the author^'s previous book, I opened this one skeptically but surprised myself when I couldn't put it down! This one I thought was fascinating and the characters much more true to the people I knew on the island. Now the only problem is waiting two years for the next book!
Rating:
Summary: a supremely satisfying read
Review: As the old saying goes, "With friends like these, who needs enemies." That's exactly what NANTUCKET NIGHTS' central characters - Kayla, Antoinette and Val - discover on the twentieth anniversary of Night Swimmers, their annual celebration of life and friendship. Once a year, for two decades, the three women have made a sacred pilgrimage to a secluded Nantucket beach, where they share decadent food and tantalizing secrets (two cornerstones of women's friendships). But, this year, betrayal and heartbreak (two more cornerstones of women's friendships) have come along for the ride. And when tragedy strikes the calm waters of their annual skinny dip, the two remaining friends are forced to deal with the far-reaching consequences on an island with a low tolerance for scandal. Hilderbrand ambitiously explores the meaning of life's most intangible concepts - truth, love, loyalty, happiness and a sense of place - with a cast of unexpectedly human characters. Her greatest success in this book lies in the well-constructed contradictions that make Kayla's story impossible to put down. Her friends are her greatest source of strength, and her ultimate downfall. To punish her loved ones for hurting her, she ruins her own life. She loves an island that can't/won't love her back. And through her teenage son's eyes, she defines herself as both a good mother and a horrible mother. Don't make the mistake of thinking NANTUCKET NIGHTS is merely light beach reading - the wine-cooler of the literary world. There's a lot more to this book than a fluffy mystery and scads of steamy sex. Kayla's downward spiral is inevitable, but irresistible. And NANTUCKET NIGHTS is a supremely satisfying read.
Rating:
Summary: a page turner
Review: Elin Hilderbrand's second novel, Nantucket Nights, takes place in the same milieu -- the beautiful workers and year-round islanders interacting with fabulously weathly Nantucket visitors -- as her first, The Beach Club. There are two significant differences, both improvements: This time the focus is on the relationship of three women, not romantic shenanigans (although there are plenty of those), and there's a a mystery at the center -- the unexplained disappearance of one of the friends during their traditional midnight Labor Day swim. The relationship of the women is touching, particularly as told through the sympathetic viewpoint of Kayla, and the mystery keeps the plot rolling.
Rating:
Summary: enjoyable soap opera
Review: Every Labor Day weekend for the past two decades the three fortyish women drop everything to spend time together at Nantucket. Kayla Montero has four children and believes her wealthy husband probably has mistresses wherever he globally travels on business. Rich from investments Antoinette Riley enjoys her current "crazy sex" fling, but her daughter Lindsey, given up for adoption as a baby, has found her and wants to meet her. Though married and a successful lawyer Valerie Gluckstern, is having an affair that she plans to reveal to the others at the swim tonight. Antoinette swims out to sea, but never returns. The Police and Coast Guard conduct a search, but fail to find her. The next day Kayla informs Lindsey that her biological mother vanished at sea. With the disappearance a dark secret that ties the trio even more deeply together begins to reveal deceptions leaving no one remaining the same. Though the behavior of the lead trio sometimes borders on the absurd and surreal, NANTUCKET NIGHTS is an enjoyable soap opera. The story line moves forward rather quickly with some elements of a thriller to propel the plot ahead. However, the enjoyment with Elin Hilderbrand's "Beach Club" read is the constant changing of feelings between love, hate, and pity that the readers will have towards the three middle aged women until the "final secret" completes the ties. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Nantucket
Review: Excellent Read - My wife and I go to Nantucket every summer and we can't wait to get there and read Ellen's newest book while we are there.
Rating: 
Summary: Predictable Pretense
Review: If you like novels full of airy nonsensical drama where the characters are either criminally diadvantaged or suffer from moral quadriplegia, where the plot is fantastically unrealistic, and where the protagonists are utterly unsympathetic, then this is the book for you and you should stop reading right here, fans of Joan Collins. I bought this book with the hope that, from the baseness of the pond scum of which she writes, Ms. Hilderbrand would transform her reader's world into something remotely resembling an effort to create a work having an ounce of artistic merit - at least that's what the book cover led me to believe (She graduated from Johns Hopkins and Iowa's writing program). How this book was rated so highly by other Amazon readers is questionable. Instead, I found that the author's writing style, burdened with overused cliche's and overused storylines, indulged itself in her characters' saccharine-like lives without ever giving any thought as to its cancerous effects on her writing and without giving any credit to her characters, which is a shame. It's clear the author has some writing talent - the vocabulary and syntax is better than your average Harlequinn, but it's equally clear that the author needs to get over the pretensiousness of her character's lives in order to reach something a tad more lasting and impressionable and a bit less predictable. Some might find the scandalous revelations exciting, but I found them predictable and quite boring about forty pages into the book. If the author focused less on trying to write a book that would be mass-produced and more on what her characters were really like 20 years ago, then she would probably find a greater audience. In the end, this book was an utter waste of time and a real insult to the reader's intelligence. If you want sex, drugs, and rock n' roll there are far better places to read about it.
Rating:
Summary: SUSPENSEFUL MYSTERY WITH A SEXY PLOT
Review: Kayla Montero lives on Nantucket Island with her husband and four lovely children. This summer has been a difficult one with her husband busy with a new large construction job and the deterioration of her relationship with her oldest son, Theo. While spending an evening with her two best friends her life spins quickly out of conrol. The story centers on friendship, betrayal, and suspense. The Nantucket setting is beautifully described and inclueds a lot of nane dropping for those familiar with the Island, but that doesn't keep the story from being any less exciting for us land-locked in the Miswest. A good sexy mystery for the beach vacation.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Nantucket
Review: Like another reviewer, I, too, wonder why I even read this book. It's mostly a transition book to get me from one great book to another which was on order and so I suppose that's the main reason. There is nothing complex about this story. Silly, perhaps, but not complicated. The story itself is ridiculous and the characterizations are absurd. Kayla and Raoul are shadows of real people; their son, Theo, an overdramatization of a young boy in love with an older woman who has mysteriously disappeared. These are the things that bother me about this book: 1) Kayla throws glasses into the ocean after Antoinette disappears to destroy the "evidence." 2) Kayla and her "best" friend Val are called down to the police station to be questioned about the disappearance of their other "best" friend Antoinette. Kayla's husband doesn't even bother to go with her and stays at home and gets drunks while she's being harassed by the detective. 3) Val is a lawyer but she's not smart enough to say she's not talking without an attorney present. 4) The community calls them incessantly, leaving phone messages on the answer machine with accusations and questions. Do people really do this? 5) Kayla and Jacob - what was that all about? Nantucket Nights is one of those books that makes you think you could write a book and get it published because this one just isn't that great. Well, maybe that's a little harsh, but you get my drift.
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