Here’s a little ☀️ to add to your TBR list.
Thank you, The Dial Press, for the gifted copy of Promise Me Sunshine {partner}

Genre: Romance
Format: 🎧📖
Pub Date:  3.4.2025
Pages: 416
Star Rating: ☆☆☆☆

“Most of the time, life is easy, but we think it’s hard. Then something actually hard happens..”

This is my first Cara Bastone book (and it definitely won’t be my last). If I’m being completely honest, the first thing that drew me in was the beautiful cover. I honestly had no idea what the story was about, but I knew that with such a gorgeous cover, the story would have to be good. 

If you go into Promise Me Sunshine thinking it will be a love story, you may end up disappointed. There was romance, yes, but you’ll really find the most of two people trying to help one another through a complicated part of their lives. I loved the ease of communication between Lenny and Miles. Their banter always provided just the right comedic relief, and their exploration of life after loss was spot on. 

The only tiny thing that prevented me from giving Promise Me Sunshine a higher rating is that the characters would get so close to having the perfect romantic moment. Still, something would interfere and cause them to break apart or lose the moment. While I understand that this is definitely more of a character flaw of Miles/Lenny, and I believe the author intended this to be the effect, it still made me feel like the pacing was off. 

However, it was still a delightful and heartfelt story, and I can’t wait to read more from Bastone.

Read if you enjoy:
🐌 Slow build
🫶🏼 More friends than lovers
😍 Adorable MMC
📖 Exploration of grief & love
🥹 Lots of laughter & tears

I recommend reading Promise Me Sunshine if you’re looking for the perfect book to get you through the cold days of winter — it will warm you from the inside out.

Promise Me Sunshine is the most beautiful story about grief and healing and falling in love. This novel follows Lenny, who is struggling to find herself and reasons to keep going after loosing her best friend. She takes on a job as a weekend nanny, which gives her a break from her grief and throws herself into a journey of healing. Here Lenny meets Miles, the grumpy uncle who lives upstairs. It takes a little bit for these two to see each other as they actually are. Miles begins thinking Lenny is strung out and Lenny thinks Miles is just an overbearing jerk. Slowly but surely they get past their bad first impressions and they become friends and eventually into lovers all while dealing with her grief and his own grief and issues.

This was such a good friends to lovers romance. Oh my god. Something I really love about Cara Bastone is her gift of truly building some stunning relationships. She does not do insta love. We are taken on such a journey with Lenny and Miles. We get to see every part of their relationship and you really get to see the moment real feelings come to light. Their friendship was so beautiful. They take care of each other so well, they really see each other...the little things they notice...the smallest quirks they pick up on each other...I couldn't get enough. Sometimes a slow burn drives me crazy, but this one was done with such purpose. They were both healing and growing, and supporting one another...Ahhh! I just love Lenny and Miles so much.

This story is heavy and can be really heartbreaking. It explores grief very honestly. But while that's true, it also is so funny. Lenny is chaotic and silly. Her inner monologue killed me!! I loved her fantasies she built about every man she met. I loved how her thoughts just fell out of her head. Miles never knew what was coming out of her mouth. Her shocking him all the time was very entertaining. She's so likable. And Miles. MILES! His thoughtfulness and care, his sweetness, his empathy, his want to be needed and helpful...he's perfect. A fave book boyfriend for sure. Also, the secondary characters were very fun. They brought in so much light.

I enjoyed this story so much. I have zero complaints. Cara Bastone is an instant buy author for me. Would highly recommend this.

I loved Ready or Not so I was super excited for Cara Bastone’s next novel. Promise Me Sunshine did NOT disappoint! The depiction of grief was so stunningly realistic, I found myself tearing up over and over again (not great when I was reading at work 😂). Lenny’s journey really read as truthfully to me because of how fluid it was. There was never a point where she stopped grieving even when she felt joy and it was so refreshing to see a fictional character feel such real things. Miles and his relationship with Lenny were both so perfect, my eARC is so annotated it’s insane. Everything that man says and does is swoon-worthy. The child at the heart of this book (Ainsley) is also a delight. I don’t normally like kids in romances but she was the perfect addition to this story. Highly recommend this one!

There was so much to love about this story. I am a sucker for a grumpy hero and Miles delivers big time. Lenny is grieving the death of her best friend from childhood. She has been avoiding the people in her life who love her and taking short term nanny jobs. Cara Bastone has done a beautiful job depicting the overwhelming grief that Lenny is facing while trying to find a way to live again.
Lenny takes a temporary nanny job for a single mom and meets Reese’s brother Miles who lives in the same building. Miles is working through his own grief and trying to find a way to connect with his sister and niece.
Miles offers Lenny a proposition to help her complete her Live Again list she made with her friend and help her through her grief in exchange for her help with miles i to build a connection with his sister she niece


What we are transported into is a slow burn love story of two people learning to live and love again told with humor and sensitivity.
I didn’t want this story to end. I just wanted to crawl into this world and spend more time with the characters.
A 5 star plus story from one of my new favorite writers!

This was a sweet yet heartbreaking book with grief, friends, family, and romance. The whole book is written in such a beautiful way that it was hard to put down. I loved Miles's character. He was sweet and patient and never pushed Lenny. He understood how people deal with grief differently and was always there for her no matter what. I enjoyed that this book was such a slow burn. While it's typically not my favorite, it worked perfectly here. I absolutely loved Ainsley's character. I looked forward to every scene she was in. It was great seeing her relationship with Miles grow throughout the book. I also enjoyed how she and Lenny interacted. Lenny is a unique character, and unlike one I have ever read before. Throughout the story, I got to see her walls go down as she progressed in her journey with grief. Her internal monologue was great and said a lot about her character. While I am not typically a fan of flashback scenes, the ones with Lou added a lot of context to the story and allowed me to better understand Lou and Lenny's relationship. One of my favorite parts of this book was that Lenny went out and made new friendships. This was an important part of her journey, and I was glad to see it highlighted. Overall, this was a sweet and heartfelt read. The characters were great, and the story was fantastic. Lenny's grief was realistic and dealt with in a tasteful way. I loved the side characters and how much they added. Both Lenny and Miles went through tremendous character growth, which was lovely to read. This was a great book that made me cry, laugh, and smile! While I wish some things were wrapped up a bit more, this was an amazing read that beautifully showed and described how complex grief is.

This was a quick read, but it has lots of layers. This slow burn friends to lovers is a perfection. It balances just right the emotions of grief and how it's not linear and doesn't often make sense until you have gone through it.

Lenny is driven by the loss of her best friend, the one person who helped her make sense of the world. Miles, having lost his parents and brother, has already worked through some of his grief, but is struggling to connect to the family he does have left.

They are each driven by their own personal experience in grief. Yet together they somehow make it work. It's a heartbreaking and yet hopeful, as grief often is. They are each working through their own challenges, but are together finding their way.

Everyone should have a Miles Honey in their corner. The story is full of warmth, reality and of course a bit of romance.

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone is a heartwarming romance that beautifully captures the complexities of love and healing. The story revolves around two characters, each carrying their own emotional baggage, who find solace and connection in each other. Bastone’s writing is engaging and infused with warmth, making it easy to become invested in their journey. I loved how the book explores themes of trust and vulnerability while delivering a delightful and swoon-worthy romance. It’s a perfect read for anyone looking for a feel-good love story with depth!

I loved everything about this book. It was so good.

This storyline was both heartbreaking and beautiful. It really described how people process grief and trying to navigate life in the aftermath.

This book gave off mini Uptown Girls vibes.

I loved both main characters. The way they helped each other out and understood each other made the whole book. The romance was perfect.

Miles Honey. That’s all. We love him. He’s the ultimate book boyfriend.

This is the kid of book you won't be able to stop reading. Such a powerful message and a beautiful ending.

The story Promise Me Sunshine is both poignant and exquisite. We follow Lenny as she goes through different phases of grief and healing. It can be quite emotional to watch her realistically deal with these issues. Miles supports her, and they end up providing each other with relatable comfort. I really love this author and have read all her works, so happy that she just gets better with every book!

When Lenny gets a short term gig nannying a young girl named Ainsley, she’s trying desperately to keep her life together. Her best friend, her soulmate, recently died and it’s taking everything in her to keep going. And then she meets Ainsley’s uncle Miles who knows a thing or two about grief and vows to help her through it and get her to the other side.

OMG, Cara Bastone did it again. READY OR NOT is one of my favorite romances I’ve ever read and so I could not wait to read her newest - coming out in March. This (very) slow burn, friends to lovers, was absolute perfection. The depictions of grief were so visceral that I found myself crying alongside Lenny a few times. And the ways that Miles was just there for her, not pushing, not trying to change how she felt, was both swoon-worthy and also made me think I hope anyone grieving has someone like this in their lives.

One of my favorite things about Bastone’s books are her banter. To me, she is the queen. It’s the perfect mix of goofy, sexy, and realistic. It’s the kind of banter that I would be sitting in a bar unable to stop staring at if I saw a couple like this. I found myself laughing out loud or grinning like an idiot more than once just reading the exchanges between Lenny and Miles.

The minute this book goes on sale I plan to get a copy to keep on my forever shelves, after, of course, reading it again cover to cover. The grief, the realism, the depiction of someone “going into hell and dragging me out” - this book is incredible.

Such a beautiful story on grief and love. As someone who has lost someone significant in my life and has fought through that grief journey, I have a soft spot for stories like these. Bastone did a great job at displaying what it looks like for someone to deal/not deal with grief and loss and how it reshapes a person completely. I adore both characters so much. Lenny’s character was so relatable in so many ways. She was loving, hilarious, spirited, and had the biggest heart. Miles was patient, thoughtful, caring, and so unintentionally funny. Lenny and Miles had the “to be known is to be loved” kind of love. Their love was built on such a strong foundation of trust, empathy, loyalty, and patience. Their story had the perfect amount of lightheartedness and depth, mirroring the highs and lows people face as they go through life and how it impacts their relationships.

Let me start out by saying that I am *insanely* biased in reviewing this book, as I lost my own best friend to cancer at a young age. This was important to me to share because not only did I love this book as a reader in general, I felt so deeply connected to this book as someone who also had to say goodbye to a best friend all too soon and had to learn what it looked like to "live again," and wow did Cara Bastone create an artful homage to that reality.

This book is just an artfully told story with characters that I fell head over heels in love with. Lenny is a delightfully relatable FMC with a great sense of humor and honesty, and Miles is genuinely one of the most realistically written MMCs I have ever read. Don't get me wrong, I love a swoon worthy, too-good-to-be-true book boyfriend, but Miles was the kind of man that could walk right off the page, and he is the kind I would hope to find in real life. He was kind and attentive, honest and forthright, and deeply thoughtful when it came to the day-to-day things that can save a person little by little. This book's charm, to me, was found in that honesty and the realness of its characters. It felt grounded in true reality and spoke to so much of what I have felt, and I know many others have when they are in seasons of grief (whether that be over a person, dream, etc.).

Another thing I loved about this story is its exploration of love in various forms. Of course, the central love story is captivating, but it's more than just a romantic arc for the two. It is a stunningly-done slowburn that is rooted in a platonic connection. That friendship, along with the also-heart wrenching one between Lenny and her dearly beloved Lou, really show the beauty and healing nature of platonic love. Then there are elements of familial love with Ainsley, her mom, and Miles, and even between Lenny and her own mom, that add depth and heart to an already beautiful collection of relationships (not to mention the CUTEST bond between Ainsley and Lenny). No matter who you are or what you have experienced, you can find a piece of yourself in this book.

When I lost my best friend ten years ago, I sought out books to speak to and help heal that broken piece of my heart, and it's books like this that mended it bit by bit. It was raw, it was honest, it was beautiful, and it is a book I will hold dear for a very long time. Thank you so much to Cara Bastone and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and fall in love with such a story!

This was such a cute book! I loved the characters, the story, and everything in between! I am looking forward to reading more books from this author!

Ok I have officially going my favorite book of the year. This is an amazing love story but so much more. It's about love and grief and coming back to yourself after a death. Amazing!!!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 stars! I really enjoyed this book exploring grief after the death of a loved one. Lenny’s quirky personality provided some comedic relief to help with the heavier moments in the book. She meets Miles who is a “grief expert” and he helps pull her out of her grief. The two go from enemies to friends to lovers gradually. This book just felt way longer than it needed to be.

Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Random House, and the author for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Pub Date: March 4, 2025

This book changed me. That’s dramatic but I can’t think of any other way to articulate it. “Something good for you, something bad for you, and a change of scenery.” This will stick with me.

Trigger warnings: this is a book about grieving a platonic soulmate. Grief is the plot. Bring tissues.

It’s been a minute since I fell so deeply in love with book characters. Miles specifically has my heart in the palm of his hands. Lenny has the zainy, quirky, bubbly girl personality but it’s not written in a pick me way at all. She’s a person who wears her heart on her sleeve and feels everything completely. And the way Cara takes you through the emotions? Ugh *slow clap* *wipes tear*

On the romance end of things, oh my god. I am obsessed. It’s a slow burn, the spice is maybe 2 chilis. Descriptive but not explicit. And only happens once. That’s actually my one gripe, that it seemed like Cara was embarrassed to write the smut. Based on word and phrase choices. But the longing. And the eye contact. And the way he takes care of her. UGH.

This book is written indelibly on my heart.

🌟Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the arc! 🌟

This was a beautiful story about loss, grief, healing, and love. Lenny and Miles were such raw, complex characters. Their love story was the slowest of slow burns, in the best way. There were moments while reading this that I felt butterflies. Miles was the ultimate book boyfriend. The way he would do absolutely anything for Lenny was so sweet. Would definitely recommend.

Is Cara Bastone an auto buy from now on?? I think so!! The grief was so beautifully woven in this story. I was worried it wouldn’t live up to Ready or Not for me, but it sure did!

I absolutely ADORED Promise Me Sunshine! This book made me sob & look at my life differently. Lenny and Miles had such an incredible relationship as friends and then as more than friends. This book was a beautiful portrayal of grief, love, and how to live after you’ve lost someone. Cara Bastone absolutely stunned me with this novel, and I’ll be thinking about it for a very long time. Highly recommend! (check TWs)