This book was such a fun adventure. It dealt with love, loss, and friendship, and did not skip over the messy parts of grief. It is a great story for anyone who has lost someone close to them, and definitely helps you see that there is no right or wrong way to feel it, and while it may seem impossible, you can feel alive again. Great characters and great relationships. This book will have you laughing and crying throughout the whole thing.

Promise Me Sunshine
By: Cara Bastone

Ok Cara Bastone. I have a bone to pick with you. STOP writing perfect (for me) books. I seriously can't get anything in life done when you have a book released.

I fell in love with everyone in Ready or Not. Then I went and read your backlist. I finish Promise Me Sunshine and think, "Ok, I can now resume regular life" and BAM, there is the sneak peak of your next book.

Seriously, I need to work and stuff.

Once again, you have created characters I fell in love with, caused me to laugh out loud, have tears, and made me sigh a happy sigh when I finished the last page.

A beautiful and heart wrenching story of grief and the aftermath of losing a loved one. I laughed and cried and felt all of the feelings.

Thank you @thedialpress @prhaudio for a copy of this book.

Bastone knows how to write an emotional read and she got me going through all the emotions with Promise Me Sunshine. This book is about Lenny who ends up nannying a sweet girl and her uncle, Miles, lives upstairs. They form an unlikely friendship and Miles helps Lenny navigate through her grief.

Their friendship is a lot of fun and I loved the slow burn with their turn to lovers. Despite the story's focus on grief, there's so much hope and joy in the story. All of the supporting characters added so much depth.

Alex Fink knows how to turn up the emotions and I got teary a couple of times. I highly recommend this on audio.

This book was incredibly moving! I felt the depth of grief and the suffocating Lenny was experiencing. It was so well written and so deeply felt. The hope and redemption was poignant! I loved the development of the characters. I loved the friends to lovers development. The slow burn was perfect for this story!

Promise Me Sunshine was such a healing book. In the beginning, Lenny is reeling over the loss of her very best friend, Lou. Miles has experienced loss of his own, as well. He meets Lenny when she starts to nanny for his niece. He sees a kindred spirit in Lenny. They strike up a friendship where her becomes kind of like her grief coach. Over the course of the book, Lenny becomes stronger and comes to a place where she can love again. It’s beautiful & heartfelt & though it deals with heavy subject matter, it felt like a really cozy, soft book .I really liked it!

This romance was top tier! I loved the setting s as d the banter so much! It was cozy and so sweet! I adore this couple and the way the author translates emotions on page!!! Easy 5 stars!!

I loved this book. The relationship between Miles and the main character was so tender and sweet. I liked the yearning near the end. I will read everything this author writes.

I’d give this book 4.5 stars if Goodreads allowed half stars.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc.

I really enjoyed this book. I don’t always love a really slow relationship build but it worked for Lenny and Miles. They had such a sweet relationship and everyone grieving needs a Miles buddy.

This book did leave me wanting more Ainsley and Reese though. And I know it’s not their story, but I think if we had had more of them and their relationship with Miles, I may have given this book five stars.

I enjoyed all the side characters, from Jericho to Lenny’s parents to the doorman - they added a lot to the story.

I always love Cara Bastone’s stories, especially her characters. This was a touching a story about a woman finding the meaning of life again after loosing her best friend. Miles was so patient and understanding of Lenny with all of her ups and downs. I really appreciate how well this book handled the topic of grief and how it truly is a roller coaster. A very enjoyable read.
Thank you to Netgalley for this arc copy! 🩷

I LOVED this book and didn’t want it to ever end! While very predictable, the way the characters were developed literally sucked me in from the beginning. I could literally feel the real, raw emotions being experienced by the characters the way this was written. I do feel the book ended slightly abruptly, and wish there was going to be a sequel!!

I could not put this book down! There were so many times I wanted to reach into the book and just hug the heck out of both Miles and Lenny. Their story is told in such a beautiful but relatable way, and is still one I think about almost daily weeks after finishing it. Finding a new normal in grief is incredibly difficult, and Bastone delivered spectacularly in showing just how layered that can be.

Lenny and Miles' story will really tug at your heart strings and you'll be rooting for them all the way to the end of the book! They are both dealing with grief, although Miles is farther along in the process than Lenny is. They meet about 5 years after her best friend Lou passes and she's still struggling. Miles is the sweetest guy to her and really helps her along. It was fun to see how they completed the list Lenny had and the humor throughout made me smile.

I read/listened to the audio and loved every minute of it! I love Cara Bastone's books and Alex Finke did a wonderful job narrating.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Publication date: 4 March 2025

Thank you to the Random House publishing group for the free ARC! I went into this book without knowing the premise. I liked Cara Bastone’s last book and began reading just knowing that I would like it. I don’t think like is a strong enough word for this book. I loved it. I can’t stop thinking about Lenny and Miles. This book is about grief, love and friendship and I found myself unable to stop reading. I loved the rich character building for both Lenny and Miles, the way they support each other through their grief and the way they know each other and show up for each other. And the way Lenny loves Lou, oof. I cried so much as I read this book and yet the humour in this book is so well done. Little snippets that felt like rays of sunshine. I love all the settings in the book and the descriptions of fall and winter. I think it’s safe to say I just loved the book. I don’t have any specific points or a well thought out analysis. It just healed my soul and my own grief a bit.

This one was pretty heavy with topics of cancer and grief (not a spoiler, obvious from the blurb). I gave it a try but now is not the right time for this one for me. Loved the writing style and the story, and will hopefully read it some day when the time is right for me.

Firstly, thank you to Net Galley, Dial Press and Random House Publishing for this ARC. Promise Me Sunshine is my new favorite Cara Bastone book! My first was Ready or Not, which I really enjoyed and led me to seek out the rest of Bastone's work, but nothing else had really hit the same as Ready or Not, until Promise Me Sunshine. This is such a meaningful foray into grief. I love a good, supportive and loyal MMC/love interest, which was why Ready or Not remained my favorite until Ready or Not and Miles came along. Oh my goodness, he is a gem of a MMC! He just loves her so well and so completely and the slow-burn is purposeful and intentional on his part to help her heal and grieve and find herself again. I really appreciated this deep dive into grief in a romance, I want to be able to read about characters facing and experiencing real, hard situations and still have the hope and promise of an HEA to look forward to. Well done Cara, I loved it.

This is the second book I’ve read by Bastone (the first being Ready or Not), and I can’t wait to read more. This friends-to-lovers romance between Lenny and Miles is a touching and heartbreaking exploration of grief and the process of working through it to be able to live and love again. I absolutely love how Miles is so committed to helping Lenny navigate her grief journey (following the death of her best friend), using his own experiences to inform the way he both supports her and gently and patiently guides her through her depression.

“You are not betraying her [her friend Lou] by healing,” he whispers directly into my ear. “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.” In return, Lenny helps Miles build a relationship with his half-sister and niece, the only family he has left.

Lenny has what Miles refers to as “love-at-first-sight fantasies” which are really just her first reactions to men she sees, and hers toward Miles is initially positive, but quickly dashed when he opens his mouth. Yet, she soon realizes that he’s just socially awkward (perhaps autistic-coded) and his gruff exterior masks a kind, empathic man. He turns out to be the perfect book boyfriend, sensitive to her needs and totally supportive and protective.

Bastone is wonderful at building tension. This is a VERY slow burn, but the wait is worth it with a hilarious, but spicy love scene towards the end. Highly recommended.

It's only March and I already know that PROMISE ME SUNSHINE will be my favorite book of the year. This book is absolutely STUNNING and I'm writing this review with tears in my eyes having just finished it three minutes ago. A love story in all its forms. It's a story about grieving the tragic death of your person...something that I have experienced and resonated with fully...and learning to find joy again without them. Miles and Lenny's romance is the ultimate slow burn. It's perfectly paced with Lenny coming back to life and boy does it deliver. Between Ready or Not and now this book, Cara Bastone has cemented herself as an auto-read author for me.

Lenny is grieving her best friend, Lou, who passed away from cancer fairly recently. She's a nanny who used to do long term gigs, but is now just doing short term ones because she doesn't feel capable of faking being okay for an extended period of time. She refuses to return to the apartment she and Lou shared, instead spending her nights in places in NYC that are open for 24 hours. She meets Miles, aunt to Ainsley, pretty immediately in the book and the two of them do not make the best first impression on one another. But Miles figures out what's going on with Lenny and he's determined to help her through it, in return for helping him figure out how to get along better with Ainsley.

Bastone pairs the deep emotions of grief with the overall lightheartedness of this romance with deft skill, as this book had me alternatively tearing up and then laughing. I have always loved her writing and felt like it shined even more than usual in this particular novel. In this novel, Bastone not only introduced us to a cast of characters that already had background with one of the characters, but also let us watch Lenny and Miles meet and befriend individuals throughout the course of the novel in a way that felt so very NYC for me. I liked it because I often think about how hard it can be to make friends as an adult and to build community, but in this book, Miles and Lenny demonstrate that sometimes it requires simply putting yourself out there and having new experiences and inviting others in. I really liked the discussion of complex family dynamics and the ways in which we got to know our characters and their struggles. Basically, I think Bastone shined in the ways that she always does with the creation of her characters and the dynamics between them. I loved this book a lot and am sure it's going to be one that sticks with me for a long time to come.

I absolutely loved this book! It was a great rom com with a serious topic of grief. I really enjoyed it! Lenny is grieving the loss of her best friend Lou and trying to navigate through life without her. She takes a job as a nanny for a single mom and meets Miles . Miles will help Lenny through the grief process and fall in love in the process. This book was definitely one of my favorites. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.