Review: Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone

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What's the vibe?

Slow Burn

Grief Journey

Nanny meets Uncle

Found Family

Uptown Girls meets Fleabag.

Lenny is hanging by a thread, and surviving each day feels harder than the last. When she takes a temporary nanny job, she finds herself under the watchful eye of her charge’s uncle, Miles. He sees beneath her carefully curated nanny persona to the grief she is barely hiding after the loss of her best friend. As someone who has spent much of his own life surrounded by loss, Miles makes it his mission to help Lenny find a reason to live again. And somewhere along the way, Lenny may be helping him settle into this new life too.

Huge thanks to Dial Press for the E- ARC of Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone for review.

Cara Bastone...WHO HURT YOU and WHY DO YOU FEEL THE NEED TO HURT READERS BACK?!?! Kidding! I love to have my soul ripped from my body tossed in a shredder then taped back together slowly over 373 pages.

Promise Me Sunshine reminded me of Uptown Girls in the best way (R.I.P. Brittany Murphy). Not because the stories are the same, but because it has that same feeling of a kid and a nanny finding each other at exactly the right time. Neither of them fully understands the impact they are having on the other, but you can feel it happening in every interaction. It's not just Lenny and Ainsley that connect, Lenny finds herself entwined with all of the members of the Hollis family.

Lenny feels so alive on the page, even when she is in such a depressive state. That is not easy to pull off, but Cara Bastone does it beautifully, as usual. Lenny is grieving, lost, and trying to survive a life that no longer looks the way it she had always envisioned. But she is still so funny, strange, warm, and deeply human.

Miles was such a kind soul. He has his own baggage, but he also understands grief in a way that allows him to meet Lenny where she is without trying to rush her through it. He is not trying to fix her, exactly. He is trying to help her remember that she is still here. That there is still a life waiting for her. That living without Lou does not mean leaving Lou behind.

What I loved most was the way all four of them wound up healing each other. Lenny, Miles, Ainsley, and Reese are all carrying something, even if they do not all have the words for it right away. Watching them slowly become part of each other’s healing was beautiful. It never felt like grief was being wrapped up neatly or solved, which I appreciated. Instead, it felt like the story was showing how love can make grief a little more livable. Can make the loss feel just a little....less.

I definitely teared up a few times, but it was not always from sadness. Sometimes it was because I could feel what Lenny was feeling as she started learning how to live again. How to live without her best friend. How to live for Lou. How to carry her grief and still make room for something new.

Promise Me Sunshine is emotional, tender, hopeful, and beautifully crafted. It is a story about grief, friendship, family, romance, and the strange ache of realizing that moving forward does not mean forgetting who you lost.

This book is perfect for readers who love emotional slow burns, nanny stories, found family, healing journeys, and books that hurt your heart before putting it back together again. If you enjoyed The No-Show, or Wait for You than Promise me Sunshine is absolutely for you.