Such an emotional read that I loved every second of! I don’t think this book would effect me as much as it did but I truly felt the pain the FMC went through the entire book!

Cara Stone has done again, she’s made me cry and healed my broken heart with Promise Me Sunshine. This novel beautifully encapsulates what grief feels like, in particular to losing your best friend in your 20s. It’s a love story but not your typical one, and I loved that.

I just finished and want to immediately pick this right back up and read it again. The way Cara Bastone tells a story and the emotion she injects into her characters is so beautiful. Grief envelops you and Milo and Lenny brought each other back from the depths. (Could I order a Coach Milo??)
Patiently waiting for Caras’s next book!

Thank you net galley for the ARC! I was also lucky enough to meet author, Cara Barstone on her book tour.

This book is funny and honest and deals with grief in such a poetic way. I really enjoyed Lenny’s visions of each “lover” she has and Miles kind heart is shown right from the start.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4 stars easy baby!

This was a great book about finding love while Lenny deals with the grief of losing her best friend. I loved Lenny’s humor and her relationship that developed with grumpy ol’ Miles.

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow right book right time. But also, needed this book and a miles years ago after my best friend died. I was very nervous going into this because I’m hit or miss when it comes to best friend grief with a book, but I would trust Cara Bastone with my life.

It’s so easy to forget to take care of yourself and to live each day when navigating grief, so Lenny was incredibly fortunate in finding the safety of miles when she did. Miles truly might be one of my favorite MMC’s I’ve read in so long. He truly understood what it meant to help Lenny remember to live life.

There are few books that I’ve felt like detailed grief, living, and moving on well, but this book truly did such a good job. Absolutely beyond thrilled I read this and suspect it will go on to be a comfort read around the anniversary of losing my best friend.

Cara has a way with words that I cannot explain! I was so excited to read another book after ready or not and this did not disappoint.

Cara Bastone deserves to be as big and popular as Emily Henry. This story is a romance, yes, but it is also SO much more. Watching characters work through grief in a way that is so incredibly human was healing for me. I will recommend this to all my friends.

The best book I’ve read all year!! Without a doubt Cara Bastone is an auto buy author and her work never ceases to blow me away! Promise me Sunshine was so heart achingly tender and absolutely had me crying my eyes out! You see such a raw portrayal of someone deep within the throws of grief and their efforts to try and live again while also finding love when least expected! You will be rooting for Lennon from beginning to end!! Then we have the romance? SEDATE ME! The most natural build from strangers to friends to more?! I ate it up and would gladly have read an additional 400 pages just to see more Lenny and Miles.
Can’t wait to see more from Cara!!

Perhaps one of the most beautiful romances I have ever read, Promised Me Sunshine is an emotionally gripping novel about love that is genuinely based on caregiving and friendship.

Lenny is heartbroken, functioning, but not living after the loss of her best friend and soulmate, Lou. While also trying to survive in her late 20s. She is a ghost of her for herself, trying to navigate being left behind and survive her late 20s.

While Miles may have an incorrect first impression of Lenny, he quickly pivots and can just see her.

And the WAY he see her… it was just magic.


Miles becomes her support system as Lenny slowly begins to live again.

And yet, Miles himself also has suffered from unimaginable loss and heartbreak through helping Lenny heal herself. Miles slowly begins to reckon with those parts of his grief he has chosen to ignore.

I just wanted to wrap these two broken people up and protect them, and Bastone’s writing lets that happen.

Miles and Lenny form a beautiful friendship with just a blurry edge of a line you can’t help but hope they cross. I loved Miles's restraint and knowing Lenny was not ready to enter a relationship. He shows his love for her and his little family over and over again.

Cara writes a raw depiction of grief and a beautiful description of new and old friendships. Since I finished this book, it has had a vice grip on my heart; I cannot get over how tender it was.

This book is quite a slow burn, but the relationship between Miles and Lenny is so well-developed that I hardly even noticed.

This cemented Cara Bastone as one of my absolute favorite authors, and I can't wait to read what she writes next.

If you like your romance filled with depth and honest emotions, this is an absolute must-read and one of my top books of the year!

What a sweet and impactful book on both the power of grief and love. I feel lucky to have read it. Thank you for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for allowing me to read this prior to release in exchange for an honest review.

I LOVED the main character, Lenny. Her grief journey was equal parts humorous and devastating. You were right there with her the entire book. You felt her pain and loss. She was never afraid to just be in her sadness.

Miles... man I wanted to love him so much, and eventually I did. I just felt like his storyline with Lenny was so forced in the beginning. Just an odd situation between strangers. His character though was top notch, golden retriever energy.

I really enjoyed this book! Highly recommend. The snail paced, slow burn was worth it :-)

Cara Bastone has the honor of making me cry. I think only two authors have done that, ever. So I was determined to not let Promise Me Sunshine make me cry again. Unfortunately, it did anyway - which to be honest is a good thing, emoting is healthy and good! Cara has such a poetic way with words.

"I'm uncontainable. I've just cracked the code. How to live a perfect existence: just embrace it all, every lovely/excruciating color."

How am I supposed to form a coherent thought about how much I loved this book? In the most underwhelming of reviews, all I can say is you must read it! What a heartbreaking, emotional, and relatable book. Laced with humor, you know, for balance. Miles it the epitome of, well, everything! These characters and their story will certainly stay with you long after you've finished reading!

Thank you to the publisher, Cara Bastone, and NetGalley for the eARC.

This was one of the most beautiful books i’ve read in 2025 this far, it managed to navigate the ins and outs of grief but also tell such a magical story about over coming hardships.

I loved lenny and miles, the way they disliked one another so much in the beginning but also managed to become genuine friends which blossomed into one of the most well written love stories.

This book was sad but it was also very real and raw, I loved cara’s ability to just grasp at the readers heartstrings and make them really feel for the characters of the book.

This is one of the best books ever written about romance and grief intertwined. Miles and Lenny are such loveable characters. Thanks netgalley.

But the thing about losing the person you love the most on earth is— somehow— you still have to do mundane things like tie your shoes and make enough money to continue to exist in this punishing world.

Grief… it’s not like any other emotion. It is utterly discombobulating. Among many other things.” “I’m so sorry,”

“Grief is a relationship,” he continues. “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

I loved this so much. This is a book that will make you feel ALL the things. I laughed, I cried, I felt the depths of the characters’ grief, I laughed some more, and then I cried happy tears. These characters are so lovable and sweet and adorable and they just made me so, so happy. I can’t wait to read more from this author. Thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the ARC!

This book made me cry so hard. Cara Bastone is so good at writing about healing and connecting and I just want to live inside one of her books

This book has quickly become one of my favorite romance books of the year. The way that @carabastone is able to so seamlessly and honestly write about navigating grief and learning to live, while also incorporating so much humor and love in the littlest of moments is truly incredible.

This book hold so much - deep grief, beautiful hope, an incredible and enduring love story, all wrapped into one 💗

Lenny and Miles will forever be a book couple I think about and keep going back to. The way they help each other grow and keep looking for the light in the dark together is amazing! ☀️

Thank you to NetGalley and Randon House Publishing Group for a digital ARC of Promise Me Sunshine.

I'm sorry, WHAT! I am KICKING myself I didn't read this when I first got the ARC, but I'm also glad because it was the perfect read to get me out of my reading slump.

There are only two books this year (that aren't rereads) that I've given easy five stars to, and this is one of them. It had everything I love in a rom-com. A slow-burn romance that I didn't feel was too drawn out. Emotional themes that were, I feel, adequately conveyed. Laugh-out-loud humor. The writing, ugh, I loved. The pace, plot, I mean it, everything, was so perfect to me. I laughed and cried in the first chapter and I knew immediately it would be at least 4 stars. I can't wait to dig into the author's backlog. Her voice is distinct and those are my favorite. This one will stick with me all year and I'll recommend to everyone.