Elin Hilderbrand

Main Street, Nantucket. Featured in many of Hilderbrand's books.

Elin Hilderbrand (born July 17, 1969) is an American writer of beach reads that are often focused on mystery and romance. Her novels are typically set on and around Nantucket, where she resides. In 2019, New York magazine called her "the queen of beach reads".

Early life and education Born and raised in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Hildebrand spent her summers on Cape Cod, "playing touch football at low tide, collecting sea glass, digging pools for hermit crabs, swimming out to the wooden raft off shore", until her father died in a plane crash when she was 16. She spent the next summer working in a factory that made Halloween costumes. While working at the factory, she promised herself to find a way to spend every summer at the beach.

She attended university at Johns Hopkins University majoring in creative writing. After graduating, she became a teaching and writing fellow at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Career Hilderbrand moved to Nantucket in 1993, working as a "classified ads girl" at a local paper. During her first trip to Nantucket, she met her now ex-husband, Chip Cunningham. Since Barefoot in 2007, they have been published by Little, Brown and Company.

Hilderbrand's novels' locations are written from reality, featuring local businesses and landmarks in current-day Nantucket like the Brant Point Light and "The Chicken Box". Moreover, despite many of her books not being a part of a book series, characters and locations overlap.

Her 2018 book The Perfect Couple, which was her first murder mystery was adapted by Netflix and released as a miniseries with the same name in 2024, starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Eve Hewson and Dakota Fanning.

Ellen Pompeo has been working with ABC to adapt Hilderbrand's Paradise Trilogy into a TV series in which she would star after her departure as the lead actress in Grey's Anatomy.

After her 30th book was published, Swan Song, Hilderbrand made the decision to retire from Nantucket based novels. Her latest inspiration is a two part book series based on her daughter, Shelby Cunningham's experience at St George's School in Newport, Rhode Island. The first book of the series, The Academy, released on September 16th, 2025, and its follow-up, The Thoroughbreds, is scheduled to release in Fall 2026.

Personal life In 1995 Hilderbrand married Chip Cunningham at The Chanticleer in the Nantucket village of Siasconset. They have three children, and were divorced in 2015. Hilderbrand has been very vocal about her diagnosis and empowering other women through her movement, #mamastrong. This initiative sends her books to cancer centers around the United States.