It’s amazing to me how prolific Elin Hilderbrand is. At the height of her career, she was turning out books at a remarkable pace while also appearing at dozens of events a year. And somehow, her books still manage to deliver the things readers come to her for: heart, gorgeous settings, great food, complicated relationships, and usually a flawed heroine at the center of it all.
The last Hilderbrand book I picked up was The Five-Star Weekend, and I gave it four stars. So when I had a girls’ trip to the Amalfi Coast on the calendar, I decided a new beachy read would be the perfect thing to bring along to Positano.
Enter 28 Summers.
What Is 28 Summers About?
28 Summers pays homage to the movie Same Time, Next Year (which I’ve never seen). We meet Mallory and Jake—the kind of golden couple we expect from Elin Hilderbrand—when they are in their twenties and careless, though not completely carefree.
What begins as a romantic weekend turns into an unusual pact: no matter what happens during the rest of the year, Mallory and Jake will meet on Nantucket for one weekend every summer.
And they do.
The book follows their relationship across 28 summers as careers develop, marriages happen, children arrive, friendships change, and the stakes surrounding their secret relationship become increasingly complicated.
It’s a love story, certainly. But whether it’s a romantic love story is a more interesting question.
A Clever Structure That Moves Through the Years
The structure of 28 Summers is one of the things I enjoyed most. Each section brings us into a new year, and Hilderbrand starts by reminding us what everyone was talking about at the time. Here’s how it looks:
September #13:2005
What we are talking about in 2005? Hurricane Katrina; Brad and Jen; YouTube;Terri Schiavo; John Roberts
These cultural touchpoints immediately ground us in the year. They’re also surprisingly effective at showing just how much time is passing outside Mallory and Jake’s protected little Nantucket bubble.
Their relationship may stay frozen in this once-a-year ritual, but the rest of the world certainly doesn’t.
Mallory Isn’t My Favorite Hilderbrand Heroine
Mallory is one of Hilderbrand’s flimsier heroines for me. I didn’t find her quite as interesting as some of the people orbiting around her.
The supporting characters, however, are terrific.
Mallory’s BFF Leland is fabulously horrible, while her nemesis Ursula is a richly drawn character with plenty of flaws of her own. These women add some much-needed friction to a story that could otherwise become overly romantic about Jake and Mallory’s arrangement.
Because let’s talk about that arrangement.
Is This Actually Romantic?
What fascinated me most about 28 Summers was the idea of a repeated love affair.
It seems so self-indulgent.
And also so tricky.
Can two people really maintain a secret relationship for decades without hurting everyone around them? Can you carve out one perfect weekend every year and pretend it exists separately from the other 51 weeks?
While we’re cheering for Mallory and Jake to make it, we’re also cringing at the collateral damage.
That’s what made the premise more interesting to me than the romance itself. Their annual escape sounds incredibly romantic when viewed from inside the bubble. From outside it? It’s much messier.
And Hilderbrand doesn’t entirely let them—or us—off the hook.
Why Elin Hilderbrand Is So Good at Beach Reads
The strongest part of Hilderbrand’s writing is her ability to transport us.
I’ve never underlined a sentence in one of her books because it made me jealous of her craft. Her sentences are perfectly adept, but they don’t affect me the way other writers do. (I’m currently knee-deep in my next Maggie O’Farrell.)
And that’s okay.
Hilderbrand’s gift is storytelling.
She has a seemingly bottomless well of characters, relationships, secrets, meals, houses, beaches, cocktails, betrayals, and complicated women. She knows how to create a world you want to enter and, more importantly, how to keep you turning the pages once you’re there.
I love her for that.
And 28 Summers absolutely delivers.
Final Thoughts
28 Summers is a terrific beach read: romantic, messy, escapist, and just morally complicated enough to give you something to think about between chapters.
I tore through it.
If you’re already an Elin Hilderbrand fan, this is an easy recommendation. And if you like Jennifer Weiner, complicated female characters, long-running love stories, or books that transport you straight to a summer house on Nantucket, add this one to your beach bag.
One-line takeaway: 28 Summers is an addictive Nantucket love story that makes you root for its central romance even as you question the damage it leaves behind.
For fans of: Jennifer Weiner, Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend, Nantucket novels, complicated romances, beach reads, and stories that follow characters across decades.
Where I read it: On a girls’ trip to the Amalfi Coast—the kind of place that practically demands a juicy beach read.
You can find this—and everything else I’m reading this year—on my running 2026 book list.
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