Nantucket Nights
The ties between women can run as deep as the ocean-but so can the secrets.\ For 20 years, Kayla, Antoinette and Val have performed their own special summer ritual. Once a year, the old friends put aside their daily, separate lives to drink champagne, swap stories and swim naked under the Nantucket stars. But on one of those bonding nights, one of their trio swims out from the shore and doesn't return. After the surviving friends emerge from their grief, they realize that the repercussions of...
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A full moon, a twenty-year old friendship-and a Nantucket night no one would ever forget...For 20 years, Kayla, Antoinette, and Val have performed their own special summer ritual. Once a year, the old friends put aside their daily, separate lives to drink champagne, swap stories, and swim naked under the Nantucket stars. This time though, one of them swims out from the shore and doesn't return. After the surviving friends emerge from their grief, they realize that the repercussions of their loss go far beyond their little circle, and they begin to uncover layers of secrets, and their connections to each other, that were never revealed on the beach. What has made their friendship strong now has the power to destroy their marriages, families-and even themselves."Things get more twisted at every turn with enough lies and betrayals to fuel a whole season of soap operas...readers will be hooked."--Publishers Weekly"Fast paced and suspenseful."--BooklistPublishers WeeklyElin 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. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
KaylaIt is December on Nantucket Island—a month of white skies and the first truly cold winds of the winter, a month made bearable by Christmas cheer. When Kayla stands next to the big Douglas fir in front of Pacific National Bank, she gazes down Main Street at the rows of trees with their fat colored lights, the snow flurries dusting the cobblestones, and the people she has lived amongst for twenty years, who are hurrying into the warm shops.Kayla has shopping to do as well. At The Complete Kitchen, she buys an ice cream scoop for Luke’s teacher, and the woman behind the register offers her an hors d’oeuvre from a silver platter: smoked salmon on rye bread topped with caviar that looks like black pearls. At Nantucket Sleigh Ride, they’re handing out hot cider in paper cups. Kayla buys ornaments and a strand of scallop-shell lights. At Johnston’s of Elgin cashmere shop, Kayla splurges on a cherry red pashmina for a party she and Raoul have been invited to on the fifteenth. The salesgirl wraps the pashmina in cream-colored tissue paper, ties it up with red ribbon, and then slips it into a fancy shopping bag with silk cord handles. Walking back to her car, Kayla marvels at how, on the outside, everything in her life appears to be back to normal. And on a day like today, better than normal.Antoinette has been missing for three months.As Kayla walks into her house, the phone rings. She still can’t bring herself to answer the phone because she’s afraid.“Afraid of what?” Raoul asked her once.Afraid of this very thing: She waits for the machine to pick up, and then she hears a voice.“Kayla,” the voice says. “This is Paul Henry. I have news. Please call me.”Kayla deletes the message and begins pacing the house, still clutching her shopping bags. She is grateful that she’s the only one home. No one else heard the message.I have news.Afraid of what?Afraid that everything is not back to normal. Antoinette, the woman whom Kayla once called her best friend, was swept off the coast of Great Point while swimming in the middle of the night on Labor Day weekend.Was Antoinette dead? Alive? There was no way to know.Until now.Copyright © 2002 by Elin Hilderbrand.
\ Publishers WeeklyElin 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. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsFollow-up to Hilderbrand's debut, The Beach Club (2000), that summons up stronger plotting but is still sheer as a see-through bikini. Hilderbrand's steady flow of island detail impresses as a kind of consumer's guide to Nantucket even as one's hunger deepens for a Bret Eaton Ellis psycho amid the glitter or even an ax-wielding Russian student of Nietzsche out to murder a Monomoy millionaire. Can one really read 200-plus pages of this chicken salad? Three women in their 40s have met for 19 years on the Friday of Labor Day weekend for moonlit Champagne-and-lobster-tails, all-night nude swim, and heartfest. Kayla Montero, with four kids, fights her weight while married to her gorgeously handsome Brazilian husband, Raoul, a contractor with a ten-million-dollar house to build—and quite possibly mistresses to service. Antoinette Riley, who has been "having crazy sex," is "dark-skinned like an Egyptian priestess" and has "the sexiest voice on the planet. . . dark and exotic, like sandalwood, like expensive chocolate." A daughter, Lindsey, "the color of a wine cork" and given up for adoption as a baby, has tracked Antoinette (who has $30 million from Microsoft investments) down and wants to meet her the day after the swim party. Married Valerie Gluckstern, Nantucket's top lawyer, has been having an affair "with someone they all know" and will tell all at the swim. Valerie brings a Methuselah of Laurent-Perrier Champagne to the swim, Antoinette a tub of lobster tails, Kayla a quart of raspberries and pale creamy Saint André cheese. Then Antoinette swims out, never returning. Police, coast guard, no Antoinette. Next day Kayla meets Lindsey, gives her the bad news, escorts her about. As it happens,Antoinette was pregnant by Kayla's 18-year-old son, Theo! From there, everything dips deep into Peyton Place country, with Kayla turning adulteress as the muck rises. One hates to see Kayla, a good Nantucketer, take it on the chin like this. But, well, for a good story? Hey.\ \ \ From the Publisher"Things get more twisted at every turn with enough lies and betrayals to fuel a whole season of soap operas...readers will be hooked."—Publishers Weekly\ "What a perfect summer pleasure Elin Hilderbrand provides in Nantucket Nights, mixing the complexities of family life and friendship with suspense, romance, and moonlit Nantucket nights."—Nancy Thayer, author of Custody\ "Dips deep into Peyton Place country."—Kirkus Reviews\ "Ms. Hilderbrand paints a picture of idyllic Nantucket life that slowly starts to unravel as the ugly underbelly is revealed. Hidden secrets, a mysterious disappearance, and the pain of betrayal form the basis for this haunting read."--Romantic Times\ "The novel is fast paced and suspenseful enough to keep readers interested. A likely candidate for summer-vacation reading."—Booklist\ \ \
