Solid 4 stars. Thank you NetGalley for the arc of this book. Despite the depressing subject matter I really enjoyed it. The author did an excellent job of adding humor to the book so it wasn't too sad of a read. I really enjoyed the story minus one weird scene. I wish there was a little more at the end as well...maybe an epilogue. Overall I really like this authors writing style and look forward to reading more of her books in the future.

Cara Bastone may be one of my new favorite authors. Romance, but with emotional complexity, and good humor. Loved every second! Just as good, if not better, than Ready or Not!

This isn’t my usual read, but I ended up really loving it. Lenny’s journey through grief and her bond with Miles were heartfelt and touching.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 stars from me!

I enjoyed Cara Bastone’s book Ready or Not a lot, so I was already excited to read this one.

Promise Me Sunshine follows our FMC Lenny who is trying to find her way after losing her best friend to cancer, and Miles, the gruff and handsome uncle to the sweet 7 year old girl that Lenny is babysitting. It's about how to come back to life after facing the depths of grief, showing up for others and for yourself, and rebuilding your life after tragedy.

I love how Miles and Lenny's relationship was so layered—each of them showing up as imperfect humans and works in progress, and how they were both able to help each other grow. I wish everyone going through hard times had a Miles!!

Cara Bastone writes such real characters that I feel like I would be friends with. They're mature but also have issues they're working on and ways they're trying to grow.

This is the best of the romance genre for me—love in the messy, real parts of life, exploring what it means to be human, and how we can grow and change despite the challenges of life.

Read this if you enjoy books with:
💕 Friends to lovers
🐌 Slooow burn
🗽 City vibes (NYC!)
📈 Character growth
🤍 Flawed but caring MCs
✨ Found family and the value & beauty of friendship
💔 Grief and loss
😢 Emotional read

Thanks to Penguin Random House and Cara Bastone for giving me this ARC (opinions are my own!). It releases on March 4, 2025.

Cara Bastone has a special way of reaching out to readers and making them FEEL. This book was funny, compelling, and moving. I did wish for slightly more depth in the character of Miles (he felt almost too perfect) but I really enjoyed it. 4 Stars.

I really liked this story, I love how the author address the grief aspect. She made me go to all the emotion and I loved that. I won't lie the start is very slow, the book really started to interest me at about 35-40%, but like I said it is really well written so I didn't really care. The characters are great, I would have like to have I little more detail on their life before, there were some but not enough in my opinion to really understand how much the characters were grieving. I'ts a super good book if you want to cry and then laugh in the same sentence, I don't know how she did that but she did and I loved it.

What a gorgeous book above love and grief. Absolutely loved the characters and their understanding of grief. It was a slow start but so glad I stuck with it!

2 stars ⭐

I really enjoyed the authors previous work so I thought I would enjoy this more than I did. Firstly, the pacing was all over the place. One thought from our FMC could take up 4-5 paragraphs yet when we get to the scenes where things are actually happening, things move so quickly I have to re-read paragraphs to understand. Speaking of the FMC, Lenny, is so... infantile? They have her wearing childish sweaters (which jesus christ I know she's a babysitter but c'mon man) every day and the way she acts... listen i know she's going through grief but she's so one dimensional and she's clearly trying to emulate the "omg i'm so quirky and sad and not like other women" vibe and i hate it. On that note, the MMC is so bland it's laughable. He is staler than a piece of week old toast. He can be replaced by every other romance MMC and I wouldn't even notice.

Overall, I'm disappointed,

I absolutely loved "Ready or Not" by Cara Bastone, so I was super excited to read her next book, "Promise Me Sunshine". I'll admit I went in with pretty high expectations, but overall, this one did not disappoint! Lenny is grieving the tragic loss of her best friend, when, while on a nannying gig, she meets Miles. Miles is no stranger to grief- having lived through some pretty traumatic events in his past, he takes it upon himself to look out for Lenny during this tough time. The writing was excellent with lots of witty banter and several laugh out loud moments. I loved the dynamic between Lenny and Miles, and it was interesting to read about their relationship starting off from a place of intense grief. I will say, the one knock I have on this is that the romance felt a little TOO drawn out, and I found that frustrating at times. Overall, I really enjoyed this and appreciated a fresh take on a rom-com.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the advanced copy for my honest review!

promise me sunshine

literally one of the best books i’ve read in a long time. from the start it had my FULL attention. I was so intrigued by lenny and her backstory and I wanted to know everything about her. although she is battling some serious grief, I loved her character sm bc she was infectiously funny (even tho she may not have been trying). her character always kept me wanting more. and the dynamic with her and ainsley was fo fun. they were a perfect match. seeing miles reach out to lenny and try to be a friend was so beautiful. I was hesitant about him at first but wow did that man prove he was a good guy!!! the way he was there for her and understood what she was going though was actually unreal. seeing their friendship grow and evolve was stunning. you literally can’t help but root for them. seeing lenny start to heal and grow in her grief journey was so damn beautiful it made me cry. this is absolutely a book I will be rereading potentially a million times. I was constantly cracking up while reading— the humor in this book matched my humor so well and I literally thought everything was funny 😂 cheers miss cara bc this was a mf HIT!!

Where to begin? This book is a journey. Lenny is grieving and trying to navigate life without her best friend when she meets Miles. There are ups and downs, laughs and so many, many tears, but Cara Bastone takes you through heart wrenching pain with love and courage. This story is touching, thoughtful, and absolutely worth the read.

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for an advanced digital copy of this book.

Lenny’s world is shattered when she loses her best friend to cancer. She is struggling through her day to day life and is focused on the only thing she can manage, which is work, when she meets Miles, the not-so-friendly uncle of the child she has just landed a job nannying for. Miles is gruff and opinionated, and he shocks Lenny when he offers her a proposition. He will help her learn to live again after loss if she helps him to connect with his seven year old niece. Although she accepts, Lenny knows there is no way that this snarky stranger could possibly help her. But is she about to find out that maybe first impressions are not always reliable?

Every now and then a book comes along that truly surprises me. What I expected from Promise Me Sunshine was a cute little love story with some grief elements sprinkled throughout. That is NOT what this is. The grief depicted in this story is raw, and painful, and soul-consuming. While that very much worked for me as someone who has struggled to deal with a life altering loss and its aftermath, for someone looking for a fluffy romance novel, it could be more than they were looking to tackle in a book. With that said, I loved every page of this. Lenny is someone who is caught in the throes of severe grief. She vacillates from seemingly fine to overcome with emotion at the snap of a finger, and that truly resonated with me. Cara Bastone does not sugarcoat the process of moving on, and while it hurts to read, at the same time, she injects hope and humor into it.

While I sympathized with Lenny, it was Miles that stole my heart. I am convinced that each and every one of us would be a better person if we had a Miles in our lives. I can’t tell you the countless times that I melted just a little bit after reading the words on these pages. I smiled, and aww-ed out loud, and wished that I could spend just a day in the imaginary world of Lenny and Miles.

Miles and Lenny are two absolute angels that need to be protected at all costs. I truly dragged out finishing this book for as long as possible because I just didn’t want to let them go. Such endearing, comforting characters- I loved them both so so much.

This book is heartbreaking and heartwarming, and beautiful with imperfect, messy characters. But also SO funny. Along the love story and romance (which is pretty incredible on its own), it’s a story of healing, loss, and finding your way. Absolutely beautiful, and I can’t wait to reread once it releases❤️‍🩹

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and The Dial Press for the eARC to review ((all opinions are my own!))

It pains me to say this was a complete miss for me. I was looking forward to reading about a character struggling with grief, especially as I near the 9th anniversary of my friend's death. However, the writing wasn't great, and the portrayal of grief didn't feel authentic. I was completely detached while reading this, and I expected to be heavily touched and connected to the characters.

Beautifully written love story between Lenny and Miles but also touches in grief. Parts of it was heartbreaking and heavy, but this author did an amazing job putting this whole story together. I couldn’t put this book down!

"Promise Me Sunshine" is an enjoyable and amusing story about overcoming grief. Lenny's best friend Lou died of cancer, and Lenny is mired in grief. Lenny and Lou shared an apartment together, and the prospect of returning to the apartment is so overwhelming that she has not returned in months. Instead of going home at night, she rides the Staten Island Ferry back and forth all night, sleeping on a bench with her backpack as a pillow. She works as a nanny, short-term gigs currently. Through her current gig, she meets Miles, the uncle of Ainsley, the girl in her care. Miles comes across initially as rather off-putting, and he seems somewhat socially awkward. This has a lot to do with the tense dynamic between him and his half-sister (Reese), and his tendency to hover around them; he lives in the apartment upstairs from theirs.

What Miles and Lenny share in common is the grief of loved ones lost too soon, and breaking down afterwards. The difference is that Miles' loss happened years ago, and he has made it through the worst of the grief. Miles will help Lenny confront her grief and become more functional -- first by helping her cross off items on the list that Lenny and Lou made before she died (go camping, visit the MET as often as possible, eat something that can only be found in NY, etc.), and then, as their relationship expands to possibly something more than friendship, helping her regain her independence and self-worth. As much as Miles helps Lenny, by being there whenever she needs him and pushing her to make small steps forward, Lenny also helps Miles figure out how to connect with Ainsley (and Reese) and find himself. Because although he is in a much better headspace than Lenny, the events in his life over the past few years have placed him in a holding pattern of sorts.

Although the over-arching story focuses on coping with grief, the story has many humorous moments revolving around Lenny's interactions with others (including the intricate fantasies she immediately imagines upon meeting or seeing a new guy -- Miles, Jericho, bartenders, Emil the doorman, etc.), recollections of Lenny and Lou, the friendship between Miles and Lenny, and how they go about crossing the items off her list. Lenny is a very enjoyable character; someone the reader will quickly become invested in.

3.5 ⭐️. I think my expectations may have been too high after Ready or Not…

It took me almost 70% of the book to truly start connecting with Lenny & Miles. And I’m not sure why. Perhaps I’ve never felt grief yet the way they have, perhaps it’s because I could only empathize with Lenny’s journey so much.

God, I wanted to love this but I just couldn’t.

Lenny’s journey of coming back to herself is a lovely one, perhaps a believable one. What would’ve been better? Lenny seeing a trained, licensed therapist instead of making a friend she then falls in love with.

I literally squealed with excitement when I was approved for an eARC of this novel- thank you to NetGalley and the publisher! I LOVED Ready or Not, my first Cara Bastone novel, and after reading this one-- certainly not my last. She is absolutely now an auto-read author for me. I LOVE her character development, her witty banter, and just her style in general. This was a tough read with a lot of grief and loss, and I had to take it a little slower than I would've liked because I needed to alternate to something a little lighter. This book was beautiful and wonderful, and you should add it to your March 2025 TBR ASAP.

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone is an absolutely fantastic and moving romance centering around the protagonist, Lenny, who has just lost her best friend, Lou, to cancer. She works as a nanny and bounces from family to family, but is still living in her grief and really struggling. She starts nannying for a girl named Ainsley and meets Ainsley’s uncle, Miles.

I often have a very difficult time with romances that center around mental health issues or other really important topics. It has to be done really well for me to feel like it balances the sensitivity of the topic and romance. This book does a great job balancing these. It really stems from the characters, as they are all really well written and you can understand their thought processes and what they are feeling, even if the scene is not from their POV. Additionally, the romance between Lenny and Miles is handled really well in the midst of Lenny’s grief. It adds to their relationship without Lenny relying on Miles heavily for her own happiness, or Miles taking advantage of her sensitive mental state. Overall, I just really loved the romance.

The author’s writing style made the story easy to understand, but also I was hooked from the beginning. I was rooting for Lenny and Miles and felt so many emotions reading this book. Overall, I’m going to give this book 4.5/5 stars. I loved the writing, the story, the characters, all of it. I would recommend it to anyone who loves romance, but also wants to be in their feels for a little bit.

Lenny is lost in grief after losing her best friend, but a babysitting gig for a single mom leads her to Miles, a grumpy yet understanding uncle. As they navigate Lenny’s grief together, can they help each other heal and rediscover joy? (The answer is yes, it is a romance book after all)

This book. This book. THIS BOOK. Cara Bastone is an auto-buy author for me. Her characters are fresh and wonderful. There is no third act breakup in either of her books I’ve read. The banter and wit and charm oozes out of these pages.

*spoilers*

Lenny’s grief for her best friend and soulmate had me reeling with her. Every time she collapsed. Every time she cried. Every time she couldn’t seem to move forward. My heart ached with her. Books that carry grief with them always speak so clearly to me and this was no exception. No joke, I highlighted half of the book on my kindle. Lenny was funny and had a great sense of humor, even when she was feeling like dying on the inside. I absolutely adored her and I loved how she grew throughout this book.

Miles. Yes. Shep from Ready or Not was my number one book boyfriend but I think Miles overtook him. Miles was patient, steady, thoughtful, and he wanted to help Lenny through her grief and I loved how he did it. Asking her to call, offering his home, THE LOCKET ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? 😭🥹

Even as he fell for her (first and harder even though Lenny’s POV is the one we have), he always considered her feelings and reactions to everything. Reader, when he asked her to patient after Lenny falls for him… that first kiss was worth the wait.

Their conversations and real discussions had me in my feelings. Communication. Love. She was not too much for him. He could handle her and he wanted to.

The side characters and plots were absolutely wonderful. I loved Lenny’s family, their group of friends created, and I adored Reese and Ainsley. AND I absolutely believe with all of my heart that Ethan is from Ready or Not and you can’t change my mind.

Such a gorgeous book about love, trust, life, and grief. Fully, fully recommend.

*I was provided a digital copy of this book for review, all thoughts are my own.*