I can’t believe I am so lucky I get to live in the same time period as Cara Bastone and this book. I have literally straight sobbed my way through the last 30% of this book along with 13 other parts PRIOR. Beyond just the crying my body has had literal physical reactions to this book. I’m talking BONE DEEP ACHING with love for this book, love for the people in my life (specifically my best friends), appreciation for love!!!! and the most longing for love I have literally ever felt.

I wish I could smother dial press in hugs and kisses because I had no idea when getting this arc that it would literally a(e)ffect me this way. Best friendship is beautiful, and friendship in general is so amazing and beautiful and this book was so amazing and beautiful.

An amazing representation of grief and platonic love. But also such a beautiful story about learning to fall back in love with life, accepting life after loss, and letting!!! people!!!!! be there for you!!!!! I literally can’t say enough good things about this book my heart is actually in pieces rn

It’s a story of Lenny, who is just trying to survive each day after a devastating loss. She was a full time nanny but only takes short term gigs while she is in the depth of grief. Her new gig is where she meets the grumpy Miles, uncle to the kid she is in charge of. It turns out this guy with a bad first impression and people skills has also gone through the depths of grief and may be the perfect person to show her that there is life after loss and you don’t have to do it alone.

I read this on a long flight and gosh the number of times I had to wipe my eyes was kind of embarrassing but sorry not sorry for having feelings! The tears must have started at like 30 minutes into reading. To the two ladies next to me that didn’t know they’d be getting ms water works on the plane next to them, sorry! There is so much depth about not just dealing with loss but how to deal with the unexpected, the scary, the unexpected things of life and how to let new people in. Letting people in and helping is not a weakness but a blessing and necessity in life. I truly believe we are meant to live in relationship so this just hit so close to home. I loved their relationship and how much they learn from each other. I giggled to myself softly a number of time and must have been smiling, so the ladies next to me must have thought I was crazy, or they should’ve asked me what great book I was reading!

Maybe it also hit closer to my heart because of the health issues I was dealing with in friends’ parents as well as my own family. There is hardship in life but there are also so many beautiful people and things all around us if we can just let them in. Thank you Cara for this beautiful story even if you made me cry multiple times on a plane next to strangers.

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.