Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone Review

Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not.
 

Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of... a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart.
 

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again” list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.

Comforting and heartfelt, like Miles states to Lenny, Cara Bastone’s Promise Me Sunshine promises the reader that there will always be sunshine after a gloomy day if you keep your head up and know where to look. Featuring a compelling premise via a reverse twist of a buckets list, this novel tells a story about two people broken down by grief and loss, helping each other in the areas they know best. Despite tackling difficult topics like loss of loved ones, terminal illness, depression and the importance of family, the story is delivered full of warmth and gentle comfort, making it highly accessible and mass appealing, albeit at the cost of more ambitious developments and deeper self-reflections. While pleasant and fine, I constantly found myself a bit underwhelmed with Promise Me Sunshine, frequently wishing it would go further with its great ideas.

Struggling to get by and jumping between short-term, non-committal babysitting gigs, Lenny is not doing well following the recent death of her best friend and other half Lou. Upon arriving at her next weekend job, she meets single-mother Reece, her daughter Ainsley, and Ainsley’s grumpy uncle Miles. Constantly out of town on the job, Lenny is hired to look after and entertain Ainsley while the seemingly out of place Uncles Miles hovers awkwardly in the background. After poor first impressions, a chance encounter leads them to discover something they have in common; immense and crippling grief due to the loss of those important to them. But while Lenny is still trying to figure out how to carry on living after Lou, Miles is a few years ahead of her and has seemingly made it out on the other side. Miles offers to help Lenny rediscover the joys of life by helping her complete Lou’s parting After Life list, a bucket list-style checklist of things Lenny needs to complete after she’s gone. In exchange, Lenny will help Miles connect with Reece and be the uncle he wants to be for Ainsley.

“Hey, Lou. Miles says when you left, you took my heart with you. He says it was like a heart transplant. Only…” I lean forward and thump my chest. My hair falls in a tent around me, blocking out the light. “I don’t know what this new heart is supposed to be living for.”

While classified as a romance novel on paper, Promise Me Sunshine’s actual content is far more in-line with chick/women’s literature and contemporary fiction for majority of the book. One of the better elements particularly in the first half of the story is Bastone’s portrayal of Lenny’s grief and how it saps the color out of everything she experiences. Putting on a performing face when she’s babysitting, her inability to take care of herself, holding on to the objects touched by Lou, for me the book is at its best when it’s focusing on Lenny’s journey. Unable to ever go home, the apartment full of memories and reminders of Lou, Lenny finds herself aimlessly wandering the streets each night and catching fleeting moments of sleep on the 24hr Staten Island Ferry each night, featured on the book’s beautiful cover design (I thought it was a balcony or boat landing prior to reading the book). Between Lenny’s reflections on what her life has become and Miles’s steady and insightful guidance, the novel slowly progresses similar to how Lenny makes it through one day at a time. The plot is quite sparce and the overall pacing is quite slow, but for those who enjoy casual book club-style women’s fiction, there’s a lot to enjoy along the way.

The other highlight of the novel is Lenny and Miles’s progression from awkward strangers, to supportive friends, to maybe something more. With a premise like this, there’s the potential for the story to fall into an uncomfortable superhero savior complex territory which was one of my biggest concerns going into this read. However, Bastone skillfully avoids that through slow development and by showing that even though Lenny is a mess on her off-hours, she’s still professionally competent on the clock and confident in all areas Miles isn’t. As highlighted in the synopsis and genre classifications, this novel also features the friends to lovers trope which is done rather smoothly. For readers that hate the infamous 3^rd act breakup, this novel does not utilize that approach but has its own method of adding tension and separation. On the topic of characters though, my favorite part of the story is the recurring joke of Lenny fantasizing over-the-top happily ever after romances with every man she runs into. Young or old, married or single, with or without Miles judging her in the background, her silly insta-love fantasies are hilarious and honestly a mood, even if they are revealed to be a coping mechanism.

While its easy and accessible approach to mature and dark topics makes it relaxing to read, unfortunately I found its overall execution of its compelling premise to be a bit of a let down due to a variety of factors. While not every story about mature topics needs to be lavishly written, I found the prose to be overly casual and too simplistic for my personal taste with this type of material. Bastone’s writing style is quite modern, the phrasing is often written like how some people talk in their heads like “okayyy that’s weird”. Modern and conversational dialogue can be incredibly relatable when it’s done right, but Promise Me Sunshine’s basic tone didn’t really work for me, and the dialogue was serviceable yet bland. I did however appreciate its on-brand pop culture content such as Lou and Lenny’s obsession over a fictional kpop group 5night. Additionally, while the story has occasional touching moments or supportive introspection, I felt like they were just skimming the surface. I’ve read quite a few other romance x women’s literature novels that are more nuanced or touching with their explorations of grief. It almost felt like Bastone came up with the general story and concept as plot mechanism for a romance story but lacked the interest or ambition to pull off its more dramatic elements. Yet even from a romance-focused perspective it’s a bit confusing and lackluster as the romantic elements aren’t introduced until nearly two thirds into the story and the last third is spent with the two characters avoiding each other despite mutual feelings.

While I found the first half of the novel pretty solid when it was focusing on Lenny and Miles’s mutual support for each other, at about the halfway point it felt like the story started going off topic and losing sight of its original intent. Somewhere in the middle, Lou’s list gets completely forgotten while Ainsley almost disappears entirely for an entire third of the story, halting the storyline about Miles and his relations to Reece and her daughter until the very end of the story. The story’s overall pacing is generally slow, but it started to feel even more noticeable when the events had less significance or relevance to Lenny and Miles supportive agreement. This is around the time where the story starts pushing the friends to lovers storyline and while the romance isn’t bad by any means, a lot of the discussions around grief, living again, and support get sacrificed in favor of typical conflicted romantic musings. However, even when the story is on-topic, I constantly felt like the story was rushing through important moments that could’ve benefited having far more detail and time to make a stronger impact. The story simultaneously felt underwhelming and slow to me most of the time, and then hurriedly rushing through the serious moments to get back to more pleasant ones. The third act section also left me quite confused with how it was written. I think the intent was to show the importance of Lenny and Miles being able to function separately without each other as a safety net and to show the romance is one they each want and cherish, not just one of convenience and mutual trauma. However, I found the romance lacking and then a quick 180 turnaround, followed by an obligatory bedroom scene. I also found nearly all of storylines revolving around Miles’s own loses, his reconnection with Reece, not to mention the entire plot threads around his cousin’s death and his ex-girlfriend to be left undeveloped and a huge letdown. Lenny was always going to be the main focus and the character who would get the most character growth, but I was shocked by how Miles’s character’s growth was concluded on such an unfinished and off-the-page note; at least there’s a very sweet moment between Miles and Ainsley though.

Full of solid ideas and featuring a great premise, Promise Me Sunshine is a great novel for casual or light-hearted readers looking for an accessible novel that blends character drama, romance, and serious topics together. Despite how comfortable and cozy it is, the execution of its premise and its limited emotional depth left me rather underwhelmed and mildly disinterested despite its appealing characters. While far from being a poor story, there’s definitely better and more ambitious novels I would probably recommend to others over this one. Judging by its average rating and other reviews, this book certainly has its fans and I’m in the minority (lots of folks picked this up via Book of the Month which has the perfect readership for it), but for me it’s a decent yet forgettable read.