Back to school

When Johns Hopkins Magazine talked to Elin Hilderbrand, A&S '91, in 2020, she was preparing herself—and her fans—for her next act, signaling the end of her beloved series of summertime novels set on Nantucket.

During the press tour for 28 Summers, Hilderbrand began letting us down easy ahead of our last vicarious visits to the island, saying she had "really wrung Nantucket dry." Thankfully, after that 2021 novel, Hilderbrand gave us five more Nantucket books to savor, culminating in June 2024's aptly named Swan Song, which, like so many Hilderbrand novels, debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times' best seller list.

This September, she leaves summer behind with The Academy, a story that unfolds over the course of an academic year at a fictional New England prep school. Another sea change: The Academy introduces Hilderbrand's new collaborator and co-author, her daughter, Shelby Cunningham.

While The Academy isn't a YA novel, it could easily be billed as a "my first Hilderbrand" that moms—Hilderbrand's typical readership—instinctually pass to their teenage daughters after they've finished reading, or maybe even read together, book club–style. This feels like a natural extension of the mother-daughter writing team behind the characters, who linger in the imagination after the book wraps, making the reader eagerly await the sequel.

There's plenty of spiciness for both generations, covering everything you might imagine in a prep school storyline: the thrill of being away from home juxtaposed with the heartache that seeps in when the ground shifts under the once familiar family dynamic. There are also messy romantic entanglements for both teachers and teenage lovers; first-love drama; crushing dustups and misunderstandings that put close friendships at risk; a posh secret society that's literally underground; and on top of it all, an anonymous gossip-fueled app poised to take down some of the school's VIPs.

If the streaming gods are kind, we hope mother-daughter readers will one day be watching The Academy together, too—like Netflix's The Perfect Couple, based on Hilderbrand's 2018 book of the same name. The Academy feels ready for prime time.