Nantucket Nights

June 1, 2002
Elin Hilderbrand's Nantucket Nights (after The Beach Club) digs into the private lives of three middle-aged women Kayla, Val and Antoinette. For 20 years, they have made annual midnight excursions to the beach to drink champagne, skinny-dip and swap confidences, until one night Antoinette disappears into the surf and doesn't return. Juicy revelations wash up like broken seashells Antoinette had a daughter 20 years ago and a second love-child was on the way and that's just the beginning. Things get more twisted at every turn, with enough lies and betrayals to fuel a whole season of soap operas. It takes a little while for things to get going, but once they do, readers will be hooked. Regional author tour.

March 15, 2002
Kayla, Antoinette, and Val are a trio whose unlikely friendship was formed 20 years ago when they each rented a room in the same house. Val and Kayla were fast friends, but, despite Kayla's persistence, Antoinette kept her distance--until one night when her desire for a midnight swim inaugurated an annual ritual and cemented their bond. On a remote point on the island of Nantucket, the three women spend one night each Labor Day weekend drinking champagne, eating lobster, skinny-dipping, and baring their souls. One of the secrets revealed during their twentieth get-together launches a chain of events that changes them all forever. Antoinette swims out to sea and never returns, and as they search for her, wondering if she is alive, a complex web of deceptions (both intentional and unintended) begins to unravel. Though the characters' thoughts and actions seem at times a bit unrealistic, the novel is fast paced and suspenseful enough to keep readers interested. A likely candidate for summer-vacation reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)