Elin Hilderbrand (born July 17, 1969) is an American writer, mostly of romance novels. Her novels are typically set on and around Nantucket, where she resides.[1][2][3] In 2019, New York magazine called Hilderbrand "the queen of beach reads".[4]
Hilderbrand 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 sixteen. She spent the next summer working, doing piecework in a factory that made Halloween costumes; she promised herself that the goal for the rest of her life would be to always have a real summer.[7]
In July 1993, Hilderbrand moved to Nantucket, taking a job as "the classified ads girl" at a local paper, and later started writing.[7]
In 1995, Hilderbrand married Chip Cunningham at The Chanticleer in Siasconset, Massachusetts.[8] They have four children together.[9]
Actress Ellen Pompeo has been working with ABC in adapting Hilderbrand's Paradise Trilogy into a TV series where she would star after her departure as the lead on Grey's Anatomy.[12]
Her novel The Perfect Couple (2018) is being adapted as a miniseries of the same name by television streaming service Netflix, starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Eve Hewson, and Dakota Fanning. Principal photography began in 2023, but no release date has yet been announced.[13]