Imagining a summer on Cape Cod; the sunny beaches, bustling shopping streets, and landscapes garnished with hydrangeas, does not call scandal to mind. Elin Hilderbrand, named “queen of beach reads” by the New York Magazine, exposes dirty secrets of a coastal summer in her 28th novel, The Hotel Nantucket, by exposing the affairs, blackmail, and criminal activity that plague the personal lives of the hotel employees. Hilderbrand based her fictitious hotel on the Nantucket Hotel and Resort. However, from messy break ups to a murder mystery, the scandals that each character experiences while working at the hotel make a story far different from its namesake.

Lizbet Keaton, newly single after a disastrous end to her fifteen-year romance with local restaurant owner JJ, accepts a job as the general manager of the Hotel Nantucket, recently renovated by billionaire Xavier Darling. Despite the $30 million that Darling put into the renovation, the hotel’s murky past and haunted reputation deters guests from visiting. When the new employees join the team, they are in no better shape than the hotel itself. Their pasts haunt them, just as the hotel ghost, Grace Hadley, haunts the hotel, hoping that someone will discover she was murdered.

While dealing with their troubled pasts, Xavier Darling challenges the employees to create an immaculate guest experience to impress travel blogger and influencer Shelly Carpenter, who rates hotels from one to five keys. She has withheld giving the coveted ‘fifth key’ for her entire career, and Lizbet promises Xavier that by the end of the summer, the Hotel Nantucket will be the first to receive it.

Once quickly becoming invested in the characters of The Hotel Nantucket, the book becomes impossible to put down. Hilderbrand’s novel is a must...