It’s been days since I finished this and I am STILL thinking about this book. Like to the point where I’m tempted to reread it again. 🥹 this whole story was exactly what I was wanting and so much more. I just wanted to hug Lenny and tell her she was gonna be okay. Grief is different for everyone and I’m sure writing about grief is not always easy. But I think Cara did a good job representing it in this book!

Cara Bastone is officially an auto-buy author for me now! This book is one of the most beautiful books that I think I've ever read, and I will forever be recommending it.

After losing her best friend, Lou, to cancer, Lenny is feeling lost. She's avoiding her family and friends and the apartment where she lived with Lou. The only thing she can seem to do to maintain her life is pick up temporary babysitting gigs; afraid to commit to a full-time opportunity in fear that she won't be able to give her best to the kids. She gets incredibly lucky though when she's offered a weekend job helping out single mom, Reese, with her ridiculously adorable daughter, Ainsley. Ainsley's uncle, Miles, keeps hanging around though, with his judgy eyes and sour attitude. Lenny does her best to put on a good face, but Miles notices things about her, eventually offering to help her manage her grief if she'll agree to help him learn how to connect with Ainsley. As they spend time together, Lenny finds herself living again.

Cara drew a realistic picture of navigating grief and heartbreak while learning to live and love again. Miles + Lenny are goals, and I don't think a book has ever made me cry both happy + sad tears or laugh as much as I did. Absolutely unbelievable in the best way. I know it might be early in the year, but I'm calling it now... this one will be one of my favorites of 2025.

Thank you to Cara Bastone and Random House Publishing for the opportunity to read an ARC of Promise Me Sunshine.

I felt truly honored to read this book. From the first page to the last, I was completely captivated and finished it in just one day. What stood out most to me was how beautifully it portrays grief and the importance of being present for someone who is navigating that journey.

Lenny and Miles are such a wonderful example of a secure relationship built on mutual respect, understanding, and loyalty. Their story is a heartwarming reminder that love and commitment can thrive even in the hardest of times.

This book is a gift, offering not only a moving story but also valuable insights into the human experience. I cannot recommend it enough!

If there’s two things Cara Bastone is going to do, it’s write a fantastic book and make me cry. Promise Me Sunshine is an absolutely beautiful exploration into grief, the messy growth that follows, and love.

Both Lenny and Miles are two truly wonderful main characters, written with so much depth and personality that my heart aches for them. Lenny is struggling to live in a world without her best friend, and Miles is trying to find a way into the only family he has left. In Promise Me Sunshine, we are given the privilege to peel back the layers of both Lenny and Miles, follow their story into friendship and love, and watch them grow in different ways.

Lenny is such a lovely female lead, and I adored being inside her head. Getting to explore her journey with grief is heartbreaking, inspiring, and overall so beautifully done that it made my heart hurt. Her witty, goofy, kind, and caring personality is something that makes her so easy to love. I find her to be deeply relatable in a lot of ways, and I think other readers will too. I absolutely adored her, her growth, and getting to learn her character so deeply that I left the book feeling like we became best friends. She is so perfectly Lenny, I love her so much!!!

Miles is Miles, in the best way possible. He’s a little stand-offish, isn’t quite sure how to properly interact with people all the time, and he can be a little pushy, but at his core is someone who cares and cares deeply. Miles wants to be needed, he wants to lend a helping hand and to be the support beam for the people around him. We don’t get to see his journey through grief in the same way we do Lenny, but we do get insight on how grief never goes away, it just changes shape. I absolutely adored his character, getting to peel back the layers and see the sweet, vulnerable, and gentle side of him. He is so wonderful. I love him so much!!!!

While grief is the main focus of this book, the love story that comes from it is absolutely adorable. Miles and Lenny’s relationship is so intimate in every way and I absolutely loved getting to see them learn each other. Their friends to lover’s journey is so beautiful and filled with so much care, gentleness, attentiveness, and love. They would do anything for each other and understand one another so well, it makes my heart HURTTTTT. I love them so much, they are so special to me.

Cara Bastone’s exploration into grief is absolutely incredible. She does an incredible job at exposing the nitty gritty side of it all, the confusing emotions and the inexplicable pain that it can cause. Through both characters she shows the different sides of grief – the one thats all consuming and the one that both you adapt to & that adapts to you. Cara does a wonderful job at shining a light on the fact that healing from a loss is not linear, that it takes space and time to be human, that its okay to move forward and then take several steps back. So, so well done and written in a way that I think so many people can relate to.

I cannot recommend this one enough!!! I laughed, I swooned, I cried, cried and laughed some more. I adore Cara Bastone’s writing, her lovely sense of humor, and the beautiful characters & stories she creates!!!

What an amazing book! I was captured from the beginning and LOVED this book. The characters were great and it was so well-written. I will read anything by this author. I loved the fact that it was romance but also there was a lot of depth to it.

100 ⭐️ thank you NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review. I loved every second of this book. This book was romantic, funny, heartwarming, deep, thoughtful, sad, heartbreaking, healing, it was just so many emotions & feelings in one.

The main characters both felt so real. It was heartbreaking to read about Lenny’s grief & reading the little snippets of Lenny & Lou’s relationship. The story & characters felt so real to me. The author also does an incredible job at describing grief & how it can manifest in people, also handling these deeper topics with care as we follow along with Lenny.
Miles was so so sweet. Definitely one of my favorite mmcs & i loved his caring & attentive he was. The spice was pretty mild also.

This is a great romance but it is also so much more than that! I would check trigger warnings before diving into this book blind. This is one of the first romances that has really sat with me even after finishing it. Promise me sunshine will definitely be a book that I remember for a while & it’ll be a tough read to beat for this year!! I loved how the author included the list at the end too <3

Review posted on TikTok at laurenslibrary331 on release date. Goodreads review posted.

WOW! Promise Me Sunshine is absolute perfection! The writing, the emotions and journey that Lenny takes you through is heartbreaking yet so hopeful at the same time. I loved how it was not just about a romance, but about relationships with grief, with yourself and with friendship/family. Reading about Lenny putting herself back together again and weaving together this new normal for herself felt so relatable. The writing was impeccable!!

Thank you again to NetGalley and Random House/Dial Press for a chance to read and review an advanced copy of this book!

You need to understand that i knew this was going to be a 6 star read for me within the first 10% of the story!!! I have not been that done in in SO LONG. BLESS YOU CARA BASTONE FOR THIS BEAUTIFUL BOOK,
Prior to reading this, please prepare for yourself to both laugh and cry (and vice versa) while reading a singular page - multiple times throughout this book. Yes, I cried within the first 10%of this book.

First off we have Lenny, a girl who spins elaborate fantasies about almost every man she's ever meet, and she's currently grieving someone incredibly important to her. She's quirky and I love her and her character to death.
Second, we have Miles, the uncle of the girl Lenny is nannying for, and he cares deeply for all the people in his life - literally he will always make sure you have a sweater (he will bring an extra i'm sure)

Miles can tell something is up with Lenny, to find out she's actually not crazy, only grieving - he suggests that he can help her through the grieving process and help her complete this list she has.
dear friends it was at this point that I knew I would fall in love with miles - by such a small act/gesture, I knew miles was a guy who CARES and always stays. THE MAN THAT HE IS.

As they work through Lenny's list, we are exposed to both Miles and Lenny through the most wholesome, caring, compassionate and ridiculously funny experiences. These experiences may entail: the Staten island ferry, bakeries, extra sweaters, wiping Nutella off someone's lip with their thumb, K-pop concerts, lightning, a take care scene (MY HEART), a rain scene, a titanic scene - AND THE LIKE.
*While the grieving in this book is due to someone passing from cancer, Cara (the author) handled this with care - specifically by not describing the cancer itself (because then its a book about cancer treatments). Instead, she pulled the happy memories you want to remember of your love ones - this added so much depth to the story and was a point I couldn't overlook.

This book made me laugh out loud, kick my feet, giggle and cry my eyes out multiple times. This book is a slow burn in the best possible way. The emotional journey experienced by Lenny and small admissions from Miles throughout the book is something I will NOT forget and it just melted my heart multiple times over.

“Something good for you, something bad for you, and a change of scenery. That’s the winning formula.”

Please read this book - your heart needs it I promise!!

I loved the characters in this book, and how the author showed the grief process. Very sweet, but not over the top sweet.

After Lenny's best friend passes, she lives a bit nomadically and struggles to sleep, eat, think without crying unless she's on a temporary nannying gig. She fakes a lot of joy to get the job done and leave the kid content and happy. Recommended to a new mom and daughter duo, Reese and Ainsley, Lenny works her magic and then hits the streets where she twice run's into the uncle, Miles. He's gruff and grumbling but offers to help her complete her live again checklist if she helps him in return. All she has to do is teach him how to support and befriend his sister and niece.
I think fans of The Last Love Note and Pack Up the Moon will find this book to be up their alley. Books revolving around grief hit me in the emotions and stick for days, months, years. Cara sold me on her light and fluffy Audible exclusives but this and Ready or Not have made me such a fan. I loved every moment of this novel from the quirky heroine's consistent love-at-first-sight daydreams to all of the ways that both Lenny and Miles help each other grow and get to living. The brief cameo of Ethan was definitely a bright spot and can we please get his HEA??
Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the advanced copy. All thoughts are my own.

4.5⭐️

Cara Bastone is quickly becoming one of my favorite feel good, all in my feels, book writers.

As I’ve said before I’ve listen to all her audiobooks and have enjoyed those, but there is something about her novels that’s makes you feel all gooey and mushy in the best way.

This is my second novel by her, the first being ready or not (which I absolutely loved as well!!!), and I loved it so much. Grief is never an easy thing to talk about but the way Cara did it makes you feel like you’re right there. You feel the pain and heart break of Lenny. Even the panic she’s feeling jumps of the page because Cara writes so well

I absolutely fell in love with Miles and Lenny. Highly highly recommend this book.

Yet again, Bastone has brought me to tears with such a gorgeous, honest, and incredibly moving story of humanity, friendship, love, and loss. Promise Me Sunshine is a raw, unfiltered look at one woman’s journey through life as she grapples with the loss of her best friend since childhood and navigates grief. While heart-wrenching, this story is so beautiful and powerful as it speaks to grief being an ever present reminder of the tremendous love we experience.

This is one of those stories that has imprinted on my soul and I will carry with me for a long while. Absolutely stunning and I will be recommending to everyone!

"Grief is a relationship, It's the way we figure out how to keep loving them even though they're gone. And in order to do that we have to keep on going. And going and going."

My Mom passed away last March. I'm currently very familiar with grief. This book is so beautiful in how it approaches grief and grieving.

Lenny lost her soulmate, her best friend, Lou, to cancer. She is stuck in the quicksands of grief and can't escape. She can't seem to return to their apartment, she rides the Staten Island Ferry all night instead. She's pushing away her parents. She is able to fake being okay for short periods of time so she is taking on short-term nanny jobs to get by. This leads her to Reese and her daughter Ainsley and Ainsley's uncle, Miles. Miles doesn't let Lenny push him away. They develop a beautiful friendship and he helps her navigate the grieving process as it's something he's familiar with. You will love the relationship between these unique people. They are so loveable and broken. They work on healing each other and themselves.

'Promise Me Sunshine" is now one of my favourite books of the year and we're five days in. You will absolutely love this book. Does it deal with serious subjects? Yes. But it's charming and funny at the same time. I was smiling so much while reading this book. Cara Bastone can do no wrong in my eyes. She's my latest one-click author because her books are nuanced, gorgeous and wise.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House and Cara Bastone for my early copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was fantastic! The story deals with some serious issues while infusing the dialogue with tons of humor. I loved and would recommend.

This book exceeded my expectations. Grieving someone you love is something I dont wish upon to anyone. I know a lot of us have, including myself and it's not something easy. You could go from laughing to full on sobbing from 0-60 so quick. I love this book so much. Cara wrote something so beautiful and raw and just so heart felt. I felt so truly connected to these characters in a way I haven't felt connected to a book in long time. Thank you netgalley and the author for allowing me this arc I will definitely be buying the physical copy.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. Genuinely, this book shot up to the top of my favorites list immediately. This book has truly changed me for the better. Bastone’s writing is flawlessly witty while soaked in tearjerking sentiments, and I couldn’t put it down. The characters are carved with so much love, and the grief woven throughout is so well done. Could not recommend this book enough and will be immediately purchasing when it is out. The pacing is spectacular, the setting fits it perfectly, and the overall story was unforgettable.

It’s hard to find the words for this amazing book. It’s a story about immense grief and those who stand beside us and hold us up when life is at its worst. It’s a slow-burn romance between two of the quirkiest, yet relatable individuals. It’s laugh out loud funny in moments. I also don’t remember the last time a book made me cry this much. It has rich and lovable characters. Miles is my forever book boyfriend.

As I struggle through my own season of grief, I could relate to so much of Lenny’s journey. Bastone did just an incredible job of portraying grief in its rawest form.

This is sure to be one of my top reads of 2025.

Thank you NetGalley and The Dial Press for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review. Will post on my bookstagram and Goodreads on publication day.

I received this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was such a fun, immersive read! I loved the characters and the chemistry.

"Promise Me Sunshine" is a poignant, slow-burn romance. The buildup between Lenny and Miles is expertly developed and feels so well-earned — both for them and us — when it finally happens.

More than that, though, it's raw and honest. Cara Bastone has given us a beautiful example of grief and love and how complicated it can all be.

Thanks to the author, NetGalley and Random House/Dial Trade for the advance copy in exchange for my review.

"Grief is a relationship, It's the way we figure out how to keep loving them even though they're gone. And in order to do that we have to keep on going. And going and going." His hold is tighter and tighter and mine is tighter and tighter and I've slid off the desk and into his lap. "You are not betraying her by healing, you are honoring her. You are learning to love her exactly as she is. As someone who isn't here anymore...
That's who she is now. And this journey through grief... It's what we do for the great loves of our lives."

I think my favorite part about Cara's stories is that even if you can't personally relate to the characters experiences (in this book it’s obviously a very deep level of grief) but you still can feel all of their emotions and it just makes it such a personal experience to read.

"Why should I be scared of kissing you, Miles? I'd just be getting even closer to the safest place in the whole world."

This book is so so sooooo much more than a love story. While there is a great love built between Lenny and Miles, this is a gorgeous friends to lovers story of learning to live after losing your most important person. I fell in love with Lenny and Miles as friends, but honestly I wasn’t desperate for their “transition” to lovers because I was just so engrossed in Lenny’s growth and Miles being the absolute SWEETEST (I mean the list?! Come on!!)

I cried so many times, at the randomest times and was happy every time. The story just made me feel comfortable in my most genuine emotional reactions and it connected me to the characters that much more I think.

🧡Friends to Lovers
💛Slow Burn
❤️Grief
💛She’s his nieces babysitter

"Friends to lovers is not, like, ground-breaking, I know. But I'm having a lot of trouble imagining changing literally anything about my relationship with him. He's seen me unkempt, unwashed, crying on sidewalks, shouting at strangers. He's dragged me off dance floors. I've shamelessly gotten crumbs on his couch."

Final Rating: 4.75⭐️, 2🌶️

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.