REVIEW: Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone

KaetrinA Reviews / Book Reviews / Recommended ReadsContemporary / grief / NetGalley / New-York5 Comments

CW: Grief

I loved this book hard. I have no doubt it will feature in my top books of 2025. It’s just gorgeous. It’s funny, sad, beautiful, incisive, quirky and deeply romantic.  It does have a very strong through-line about grief. Those who’ve had a recent loss may want to avoid it for a while.

Helen (Lenny) Bellamy is a 28-year-old New Yorker deeply grieving the loss of her best friend and soulmate, Lou. They met in kindergarten and were basically inseparable ever since. Lou was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when they were both in college. Lenny helped Lou through her treatment and celebrated her subsequent remission. Then Lou’s cancer came back and, six months before the book begins, Lou dies. Lenny is completely bereft. Lou was Lenny’s sister of the heart, her ride-or-die, her best friend. And now she’s gone and Lenny is barely able to function. Unable to go back to the apartment they shared, Lenny lives out of a backpack, picking up clothes from thrift shops as she needs them, spending her nights on the Staten Island ferry riding back and forth until the morning or at all night dance parties getting lost in the music. Lenny dodges calls from her parents, sending them lying texts that say “everything is fine!”, scared that her grief will break those she loves. She’s alone, exhausted, too thin and only just hanging on.

Lenny is a nanny and, since Lou’s decline had been taking only short term jobs. After Lou passed, Lenny couldn’t commit to more than short term jobs. She can pretend to be okay when she’s looking after a kid. Then, her natural humour comes out and readers see who she is when she’s not completely drowning in grief.

On referral from the last family she worked for long term, Lenny takes what is initially a weekend gig looking after seven-year-old Ainsley for single mum Reese. They live in a lovely apartment on the West Side which was inherited from Reese’s musician father when he died about eighteen months earlier. Lenny is fantastic with Ainsley. I never had a single doubt that Ainsley was safe and well-cared for when Lenny was with her.

Visiting the apartment at the same time is Miles Honey, Ainsley’s uncle. It’s clear that Reese isn’t exactly a fan of Miles but Lenny can’t quite put her finger on what the dynamic is between them.

Lenny does this thing all through the book really where she sees a guy and immediately conjures up a fantasy of how they will fall in love and what will happen in their relationship. It’s a little quirky but so fun to read about and shows how quick and bright – and sometimes weird – her mind is. Here is what she pictures when she sees Miles:

He’s not good-looking, really. Low-grade sexy. He’s wearing a used-to-be-black hoodie stretched over two big shoulders and faded blue jeans. Viciously short dark hair and the kind of stubble you can’t ever shave away. Judging by that promising scowl, he’s the type who’d really enjoy partaking in a public bathroom tryst with a near stranger. I can already see it now. He and I will have a tumultuous two-year fuckfest, defined by me perpetually being sent to voicemail. He’ll stand me up on Thanksgiving, thereby dumping me. But then he’ll realize horrifically, cataclysmically, that he’s been in love with me this whole time. He’ll come crawling back to me on all four appendages. I’ll make him wait outside my door for a year before I let him back in. Eventually there’ll be a ring with a black diamond so dark I can see his soul inside it. We’ll get married on Halloween and his wedding present to me will be a sex toy. It sounds ecstatically fun.

It’s probably apropos to mention that I instantaneously spin elaborate fantasies about almost every man I ever meet. Not to say that this guy isn’t special; I have just fallen in love, after all.

Miles is awkward with both Reese and Ainsley. He’s desperate to get close to them but he doesn’t know how. He mucks it up all the time. He’s dour and blunt and regularly oversteps, albeit with good intentions. Lenny doesn’t look the picture of health. I assume the only reason Reese wasn’t worried (she is a great mother) is that Lenny was recommended by a trusted friend and probably had some context Miles didn’t (though it wasn’t specified in the book). Anyway, Miles thinks Lenny might be a drug addict and is deeply suspicious of her. He insists on hanging around to make sure Ainsley is okay and Reese acquiesces. It’s a strange vibe between them but it makes sense once readers find out their history.

It’s not long before Miles understands that Lenny is not actually a drug addict and why she is struggling so much outside of taking great care of Ainsley. Miles has personal experience with grief. His mother (who had raised him alone) and his younger cousin died in a car accident ten years earlier. He understands what it is like to lose your whole world and have to find a way to go forward anyway. He makes her a deal. He will help her through the grief and she will help him connect with Ainsley. So, Lenny’s short term gig looking after Ainsley for Reese becomes a longer term one and Miles and Lenny start hanging out.

His eyes sweep across me and a change comes over his face. He’s making an expression I haven’t seen him make before. It almost makes him look like a human person with feelings and a backstory.

Once Miles stops being awkward, which happens very quickly with Lenny, it’s clear he’s an incredibly caring person with a loving and generous heart. He sees what Lenny is going through and he knows he can help. Miles is in the fortunate position of having come into some money and he’s not working so he has a lot of time. He offers to be Lenny’s “grief wingman” and promises to be there for her anytime, day or night, to help her get through this. And he does. He really, truly does. Whatever else Miles is, he is 100% a man who does what he says he will do.

Miles understands. He doesn’t sugarcoat things or offer trite, empty, platitudes. Instead, he offers acceptance and care.

“There was nothing I could do.” The words are broken, sliced, aching with fresh blood.

“You’re doing it right now,” Miles says quietly. “There’s never anything we can do to keep someone alive, Lenny. There’s no bargain you can make. It’s an illusion. A terrible illusion. The only thing you ever could have done is what you’re doing right now. Sending her off.”

Mile is a safe place for Lenny to feel her feelings and to cry and grieve.

“Look,” he says low. “Consider it like you just had a heart transplant. When Lou died, your entire heart went with her. But you have to live, right? So now you’ve got this new heart. And you’re getting used to it. No one would expect you to run up a hill right after a heart transplant. Go slow. Go easy on yourself.”

He pushes her to eat and sleep and takes care of her safety but he is not impatient with her for being so broken and bereft. He has no timeframe for her to be better. That’s so rare. Miles is the kind of person anyone who is grieving would want to be around.

“I want to carry a framed eight-by-ten of her everywhere I go. If I’m with people who didn’t know her,” I continue. “I want to talk about her incessantly. If I’m with people who did know her, I can’t figure out why they’re not talking about her incessantly.”

There’s a beat of silence and then he says, “Then do it.”

“Do what?”

“Talk about her incessantly. Let’s say … two hours? That should be enough to get us started at least. If you need more time, we can add some. Tell me anything you want, in as much detail as you want. And you don’t have to worry about pleasantries or asking about my life or checking to see if I’m bored. For two hours, I’ll listen. No strings.”

I peek up at him. “Seriously?”

He grabs another pillow and situates himself on his back, eyes up to the ceiling. “Shoot.”

Honestly, someone who’d do that? With zero strings? Hang on to them. It’s not a wonder Lenny falls for Miles. I kind of did too.

It’s not all sad. Lenny is funny and her narrative is full of dry wit and wry humour.

In the day that’s passed since I called him from the ferry, Miles has done something truly despicable: he’s made me take up exercise.

“This is barely exercise,” he asserts, hands on his hips as I drag my ass up a hill.

“I have one little meltdown on the Staten Island Ferry and the punishment is corporal?”

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “You can walk normally on the street. How come you can’t walk normally when it’s for your cardiovascular health?”

“Maybe it’s the shoes.”

“What’s wrong with the shoes?” he demands.

“They’re for running. They’re inherently flawed.”

Miles treats Lenny with care but he’s not a pushover either. He doesn’t treat her like she’s made of glass. He’s just himself with her and he doesn’t try to be anyone else.

I throw my arms out to the sides. “Let’s be oil paintings, you beautiful bitch!”

He lowers his book and eyes me over top of it. “It must be truly exhausting to live in your brain.”

“You have no idea.”

Miles’s humour is drier than Lenny’s and a little slower to reveal itself but as they spend time together, it starts to shine. It’s not a one-way relationship either – it’s clear Lenny is good for him as well. She does help him connect with Ainsley and with Reese. And she understands Miles’ own grief and his deep desire for family connection. Miles is socially awkward in many ways but once you get to know him you know he’s completely rock solid. He’s always – always – going to show up.

“I mean that when people are feeling a thousand things at once, that’s when the wheels come off. They start messing up at work or in their marriages or whatever. Nobody lives skillfully when they’re experiencing this sort of thing.”

“Miles, you are, like, freakishly insightful.”

“I’m really not sure about that.”

“Come on. There’s no way you haven’t heard that from other people.”

He shakes his head. “You’ve seen me with other people. You just think I’m insightful because you’re currently experiencing the one thing I’m an expert at.”

Promise Me Sunshine perhaps edges right up to the line of too much grief. Lenny cries often and struggles with her grief for much of the book. There’s no quick fix. It’s a book which gives space and time to grief. In some ways, it reminded me of Kate Clayborn’s The Other Side of Disappearing. It had the same kind of beauty to it and a similar tone, even though they’re different stories altogether.

Lenny is loyal and loving, generous and funny, kind and quirky. Miles is less quirky and perhaps slightly less funny but he’s all the other things Lenny is in addition to being rock solid. They are so good together. The writing is stellar, the characters complete, complex and relatable. It’s a story that will stay with me and one I expect to revisit. Recommended.

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