I adored Cara Bastone’s novel Ready or Not and so I knew going into this, I was going to love it. I was not disappointed. Watching Lenny and Miles fall in love was everything I could ever want. The grief aspect of the book really hit me as I lost my dad a few years ago, so some of these passages truly felt like they were pulled from my brain. The writing is beautiful and the characters are fully fleshed out. I love being able to relate to characters in a book. I can’t wait to read this again.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publishers for sending me a copy of this book!

You know how there are books that you are happy you read at the right time?

This book is exactly what I needed!

Back in 2020, I lost my paternal grandmother, and it was the first close loss that I experienced. At the time I was really young, and didn't know how to fully process my grief, and I lived with a lot of regret.

This book really showed me the importance of how it is okay to go through our grief, and how we don't have to go through it alone.

I think Cara Bastone handled grief with so much care in this book, and while the topic is very heavy, there are a lot of heartfelt moments.

This book is the perfect slow-burn romance and I am so happy that I read it!!

#netgalley #promisemesunshine #dialpress

In this enemy to lovers novel, Lenny meets Miles at a time she needs him the most, deep in the grief of losing her best friend. Taking a job as a nanny to Miles’ niece, Lenny starts to gradually learn to enjoy life again with the help of a “bucket list” left by her best friend.
After reading Cara Bastone’s first novel, I was excited to receive the ARC for this one and was not disappointed! I loved the character development of Lenny, and also enjoyed Miles and his tender personality. Highly recommend for a feel-good read.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.

I really loved this book! Everyone needs a Miles in their life! I felt so sad for Lenny with all the grief in her life and Miles is exactly what she needed. So delightful! I really loved these two MC’s so sooooo much!!!

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for an ARC of Cara's second novel! I kept an eye out for this one since I loved her first novel, "Ready or Not" so much! Lenny is depressed, and struggling with how to move forward in her life after losing her best friend to cancer. She starts babysitting for a little girl whose own mother is also struggling with a recent death, and an Uncle Miles, who is having a hard time navigating his relationship with his sister and niece. I believe that people come into your life when you need them the most, and this book reiterates just that. I loved how the relationships ebbed and flowed and how they all helped each other out in ways they didn't even know they needed. You will feel all the feels with this one.

Thank you to NetGalley, Cara Bastone, and the publisher for a copy of this eARC.

This is 2/2 of incredible books for me and Cara Bastone. It took me a little longer to finish this one because of how wonderful the plot and characters were and how badly I didn’t want it to end. The grief Lenny holds is heart wrenching and the way Miles holds space for it was so beautiful. Please y’all read the hell out of this one. You’ll laugh, cry, swoon, and carry hope on every page.

Thank you Net Galley for the ARC. I loved the story building between Lenny and MIles. The story started off strong but I just felt like this book was longer than it needed to be. I liked how they both were helping each other through grief.

All I have to say is... Wow. I will think about this book for the rest of time. It is seriously a contender for my 2025 book of the year.

I loved everything about this story. From the flawed, fleshed-out characters, to the realistic depiction of grief, every word struck a chord in me.

Our main character Lenny is experiencing an unimaginable loss - her childhood best friend and platonic love of her life recently passed away from cancer. Lenny is frankly... not doing well. She's not sleeping, not eating, and just drowning through life.

When she takes a temporary nannying gig, she meets Miles, the uncle of the little girl she nannies for. Right away, Miles can tell Lenny isn't doing well, and he inserts himself into her life as her self-appointed grief counselor.

"He walked into Hell and dragged me out".

UGH! Miles melted my heart. He somehow knew exactly what Lenny needed, and he let her BE HERSELF!!! He met her where she was and embraced her quirky, funny personality. He truly wanted what was best for her in a way I have never seen depicted in a contemporary romance before.

I am not usually one to annotate, yet I found myself taking NOTES in this book. I found its portrayal of healing so beautiful and I just wanted to commit everything to memory.

Every character helped shape this book, and I felt like I was meeting up with friends every time I opened the pages. I was deeply invested in this story.

If you're ready to laugh, sob, and feel every feeling, read this book. Exceptionally beautiful. Not enough stars to give.

• lenny, a young woman in nyc grieving the sudden loss of her best friend, takes a job as a part-time nanny for a very overworked, single mom. while she hopes the job fills the time & will help her avoid the apartment she & lou used to share, she doesn’t anticipate meeting miles, reese’s half brother who lives upstairs, who is dealing with his own grief. the two strike up a friendship, and maybe meeting miles is the best way for lenny to find herself again.
• this was very much not the romcom i was expecting, but this book provided so much more depth of emotion, particularly in the way lenny & miles dealt with their own respective grief, both alone & together.
• the friends-to-lovers trope worked so well, especially since miles & lenny are new friends. the ending was so satisfying!

Promise Me Sunshine, is not just a love story. It is the story of losing a part of your soul and learning to live again despite the gaping wound. It offers a true and authentic depiction of grief and the rollercoaster of emotions one feels when having to face the unthinkable.

After losing her best friend and soulmate to cancer, Lenny is entirely lost. Lenny spends her time barely going through the motions. She can’t face her concerned parents and she spends her nights riding the ferry to avoid returning to the apartment she shared with Lou. When she agrees to take on a babysitting gig for a single mom she meets the child’s grumpy, judgmental and ever-present uncle Miles.

Miles desperately wants to connect with both his sister and niece but cannot seem to get it right. Despite his pure intentions, everything he does comes across as abrasive. When Lenny begins to babysit for Ainsley, he grows frustrated by how easily the two get along. Being an expert in grief himself, Miles quicky sees straight through Lenny’s facade and comes up with a proposition. He will help her complete everything on her “live again” list as long as she teaches him how to connect with his niece and sister. While Lenny does not think anything can help her overcome losing Lou, she reluctantly agrees to the deal and slowly begins to find herself again.

Bastone manages to make you feel like you are experiencing Lenny and Miles’ grief yourself or at the very least alongside them. One minute might be lighthearted with a feeling akin to happiness followed by the crushing guilt that comes with feeling like you are moving past the person who at one time was your entire world.

While this book is a true slow-burn, the pacing is utter perfection. At no point did it feel like the story was being unnecessarily drawn out, nor did it feel like the grief in the story was being ignored or rushed in favor of romance. Bastone gives Lenny and Miles enough time to develop a solid foundation that when their relationship evolves past friends, it feels completely realistic.

As a big fan of Ready or Not, I truly was not anticipating how deeply emotional this book would be. Part of why I loved Ready or Not was Bastone’s ability to write characters that felt real and acted like real people. However, at times I felt that Eve was a bit too quirky for me and would be cringing at some of the things she thought or said. As my only other Cara Bastone book, I was anticipating Lenny to be similar to Eve and was prepared to cringe at some of the inner monologue and dialogue in Promise Me Sunshine. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Bastone’s ability to develop realistic characters remained but that the sometimes(!) cringey writing was missing.

If you are a fan of romance books that confront deeply emotional themes with well-written and authentic characters you will love Promise Me Sunshine!

Thanks to Random House Publishing Group, Dial Press Trade Paperback and NetGalley for providing me with a digital review copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

This was such a sweet story about a young woman learning to do life after a huge loss. Grief is so hard and the author did a great job at capturing how hard it is. This is not a rom-com so I was a little confused at first. I also thought Lenny was around 20yo the entire book, because of the way she acted and talked, so I didn't like the small amount of spice at the end of the book. Overall I loved Lenny and her journey and also Miles and his journey. Great book!

Cara Bastone you got me again.

I really, really loved this book. To tackle such a difficult topic such as death and grieving in honestly a way I don’t think we discuss all that often, and to do it so beautifully was wonderful to witness. We talk a lot about the death of a family member - parent, spouse, grandparent, children, but I don’t know that we tell stories about the death of our best friends. As I sat and read the book I couldn’t help but think of my best friend and what I would do were I Linny. I can honestly say, I would probably handle it similarly if not worse. To document a friendship so beautifully and candidly to refer to Lou as the love of Linny’s life was - I honestly can’t even find the words for how it made me feel.


Miles, Miles, Miles. You perfect, sweet, loving, caring boy. You have my heart, my soul, and everything in between.

I don’t know why this wasn’t a 5 star book because I loved it so much but it just didn’t quite reach 5 stars for me. Maybe I’ll come back to adjust in a few weeks or months if I spend a lot of time thinking about it but for now it stands at a 4

PROMISE ME SUNSHINE - CARA BASTONE

5⭐

PLOT
Lenny is a message and in grief over her best friend Lou's death due to Cancer. She is avoiding everything and is taking up temporary baby sitting jobs where she meets Reese a single mom and her daughter Ainsley. But whenever she is with Ainsley her uncle Miles is always around and he notices that everything is not ok with Lenny and it's he who proposes her to help deal with her grief having his own experience with the same in the past.
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This but oo is a must read for anyone going through grief whose life has been turned upside down. There is a raw portrayal of all the emotions whether it's recent grief of Lenny or past grief of Miles and Kudos to the author for bringing them out so well. It's such a well written book with so much depth to each characters. It was heartbreaking to read and slowly our hearts are patched up. I hope everyone has a 'Miles' in their life.
This book is a 'journey' at healing and re living your life esp when you are in the dumps!!
Can't recommend this one enough!!
Must read!!

This is a beautiful exploration of grief and a lovely slow burn romance. The complexity of the characters, especially Miles, is so well developed. The ending for me, felt less thoughtful than the rest of the story so that kept it from being a 5 star, but still a great read.

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the eARC!

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone combines two of my favorite things: grief and romance. At its heart this book is about grief and dealing with the impacts as the main character, Lenny, is simply trying to survive (and failing to do so) after the death of her best friend. When she stumbles into a nanny job, her client's uncle is FINE and she swoons over him before realizing he's a total stone cold jerk. As their path's cross, Miles realizes the depths of Lenny's grief and due to his own experience with grief, helps her crawl out from the cloud. This is such a wonderful depiction of heavy grief and not being okay. The romance happens towards the last 1/3 of the book and while you know this is where it's headed, I appreciated the author's choice in waiting until the last possible moment to make this feel real. The characters deserved the romance after the work they put in and it was refreshing to see a happy ending that felt extremely realistic. If you want romance with nuance and depth, Bastone is the author for you and I'm excited to read more of her work!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me an e-arc!

Cara Bastone is officially an auto-buy author for me!! I read Ready or Not last year and it was a five star read for me, so I was very excited about this one!! I loved it!

This book made me smile like a goofball, ache with empathy, and cry. Lenny has recently lost her best friend in the entire world, her soulmate, her person, and she’s truly lost without her. Lenny is trying to continue life but is really struggling. She has a bucket list of things she should be doing to keep living, including going to her best friend, Lou’s, favorite museum as much as possible, seeing a band they love in concert, and other items. However, it’s been too hard to Lenny to even approach the list- until she meets Miles. Miles is a self proclaimed grief expert, as he’s lost both of his parents and his younger cousin, who was pretty much a brother to him. Lenny and Miles meet through her newest babysitting gig, where she’s watching Ainsley, Miles’s niece. Miles is impressed with the way Lenny connects with Ainsley, so he makes a deal with her: he will help her navigate her grieving if she helps him learn to be better with Ainsley.

I loved Lenny and Miles as a team and also as individual characters. They really brought out the best in each other and I loved seeing their friendship grow. As someone who has experienced a few deaths and is no stranger to grief, I really thought this book was so inspiring and beautiful. Cara Bastone also writes the most interesting, funny, quirky, genuine female characters.. they are imperfect but also everything I wanna be

I recommend this to anyone who likes to read romance, or wants to read something on grief, or just wants a book that will make them feel all the

I loved Ready or Not but I LOVED Promise Me Sunshine!!! Made me feel all the feels, while still making me laugh. Lenny and Miles were so sweet and tenderhearted. I’m so happy for them 🥹

Cara Bastone has made me a fan of her book. I had high hopes for this book, and they were all met! Miles and Lenny mean everything to me. Cara is such an excellent storyteller that I felt I was experiencing all of Lenny's sadness and emotions alongside her. Miles is a man. This deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as one of the best friends-to-lovers products available. 10/10, no notes; I can't wait to see what Cara does next!

Bastone has a great skill for writing gut wrenching romance that feels real and believable, this novel is no exception.

Cara Bastone has solicited a fan out of me with his book. I had very expectations going into this book and every single was was met! Miles and Lenny are everything to me. Cara is such a good storyteller, I felt like I was experiencing all of Lenny's grief and emotions with her. And Miles, the man that he is. This deserves to be in the Hall of Fame as one of the best friends to lovers on the market. 10/10, no notes, I cannot wait to see what Cara does next!