The Tailgate, Elin Hilderbrand
The Tailgate, Elin Hilderbrand
2 Rating(s)
List: $14.99 | Sale: $10.50
Club: $7.49

The Tailgate
An Original Short Story

Author: Elin Hilderbrand

Narrator: Erin Bennett

Unabridged: 1 hr 34 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/06/2014


Synopsis

A stirring portrait of a relationship at a crossroads, this digital original short story follows two irresistible young lovers as they cope with college life, and invites us into a world we don't want to leave.

Clendenin Hughes first kissed Dabney Kimball during a Nantucket snowstorm freshman year of high school. Ever since that moment - God, the rush, the chemistry! - Dabney has known that she and Clen are an unsplittable unit - essentially the same person in two different bodies.

Of course, with Dabney now at Harvard and Clen at Yale, those bodies are 140 miles apart. And traveling is a serious challenge for Dabney, for reasons she'd prefer not to discuss, reasons having to do with her mother (or lack thereof). But with the big Harvard-Yale game coming up, Dabney is determined to make the trek to New Haven to see Clen. She's even borrowed a sexy black outfit from a classmate down the hall.

But when she arrives at the tailgate to see sparks flying between Clen and Jocelyn, a girl with dark blue eyes and luscious black hair, Dabney fears the collapse of a bond she has never questioned before, a bond so important that she'll be lost without it. To learn the fates of Dabney and Clen, read Elin Hilderbrand's novel, The Matchmaker.


About Elin Hilderbrand

Elin Hilderbrand was born and raised in Collegeville, PA, but spent most of her childhood summers playing on Cape Cod. Her father died in a plane crash when she was sixteen years old, so unfortunately that ended the Cape trips. Her summers were now spent working, but she promised herself that for the rest of her life she would always have a real summer. She moved to Nantucket in July 1993, took a job as "the classified ads girl" at a local paper, and later started writing. Elin says she does her best writing while on the beaches of Nantucket or along the beautiful streets of Beacon Hill in Boston. She is a breast cancer survivor and currently lives in Nantucket along with her three beautiful children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Cammie on March 07, 2022

I love when favorite authors write short stories to enhance their novels. These extra chapters add to characters' backstories or add onto the future of beloved characters that have become like best friends.......more

Goodreads review by Roemer on July 04, 2020

I really do not see the point of this short story. Just to make us dislike one of the characters in the matchmaker? And to add to Dabney’s agoraphobia which I feel we already understood? This couldve easily been put at the beginning of that book. I didn’t feel like this added any value whatsoever 🤷‍......more

Goodreads review by micky on April 08, 2025

Welp I def need to read The Matchmaker now cuz I need to know what happens. I loved these characters. I know it’s technically a ‘prequel’ but I liked it without having read the original. But like I need to now cuz what a cliffhanger.......more

Goodreads review by Maggie on June 21, 2020

2.5 rounded up Maybe this is better than a 2.5 but I’m disappointed bc I thought this would be a nice story about Dabney and Clen, I needed some pure love story shit after finishing the Matchmaker, but this was not that and I’m even sadder now. Also, this ended VERY abruptly, even for short story.......more

Goodreads review by Jenny on May 06, 2020

Evidently this short was just a teaser for a longer novel in which this girl's crappy boyfriend will presumably attempt to make amends. That might be a decent book, but reading this short story has just about guaranteed I'll never know.......more