Cara Bastone tries to walk a balance beam of sunshine and shadow in her new grief romance Promise Me Sunshine. It’s a tightrope walk with mixed results. My full Promise Me Sunshine review is below!
Promise Me Sunshine Review
The grief romance is a subgenre that, despite its growing popularity, always gives me pause. There’s something about romance helping to overcome sorrow that can sometimes feel a bit shallow, a bit gauche. There can sometimes be a simplicity to it like the old fairy tales–a true love’s kiss coming in to save the day for our heroine. So picking up Cara Bastone’s new novel Promise Me Sunshine, I had trepidation. Yes, I had enjoyed her last novel Ready or Not, but could she really overcome some of these inherent challenges with the genre?
The grief in question here is for Lenny, who is grieving the loss of her best friend Lou to cancer. Since Lou’s death, Lenny has spiraled. She works as a nanny but only takes temporary work and spends her time avoiding the apartment she shared with Lou by falling asleep at clubs and sleeping on the Staten Island Ferry. She has shut her parents out of her life and is having a hard time finding purpose. When she takes a temporary weekend gig for a mom on the Upper East Side, she looks after her daughter Ainsley. She also meets Ainsley’s uncle Miles who always seems to be grumpily hanging around. Miles is immediately concerned that Lenny isn’t really taking care of herself. He knows a lot about grief and recognizes it in Lenny–he’s worried for her. Miles finds ways to take care of Lenny and help her to deal with her grief in a really supportive way, always being there for her no matter what. Lenny, in turn, helps Miles to connect with Ainsley and her mom. But how will Lenny know when she is really back in the land of the living and when her heart can sustain a relationship?
So, there’s lots to enjoy here. Because of the nature of Lenny’s grief, the romance moves slowly. It’s not a slow burn, in my opinion, because there isn’t a ton of sexual tension between Lenny and Miles for much of the book. And this is a good thing as Lenny isn’t nearly in the place to be open to romance. The progression of Lenny and Miles’s relationship does feel natural and well-paced.
But for me, this book found a hard time walking the line between the outrageousness of Lenny’s grief-driven behavior and what in some ways is a very chaste relationship story. The exploration of grief in some novels can be shocking–the first one that comes to mind is Wild. Cheryl Strayed’s navigation of grief in her memoir feels shocking because it’s so clearly dangerous, self-loathing behavior. Here, Lenny’s grief is defined more by some of the oddball things she’s doing, like sleeping on the Staten Island Ferry to avoid going home or going dancing until all hours of the night. It’s definitely strange, but not necessarily risky in the same way.
But given that Lenny is not taking care of herself, not eating, not cutting her hair, etc it feels strange that Reese would feel comfortable hiring her at all to look after her daughter. Nanny Lenny and actual Lenny read like absolutely different people. Which is where I feel like the sort of PG-ness of Promise Me Sunshine has a hard time reconciling with the rawness that it would actually like to explore.
This spills over into the romance because Lenny and Miles enjoy a friendly dynamic throughout the book that slowly grows into something more. Miles avoids kissing Lenny until he actually believes she is on the road to taking care of herself. Which is lovely, very PG. So then when, after the kiss, the story finds the need to go back home with Miles and Lenny for a very awkward bedroom scene, it feels really icky and unnecessary. Walking that line, again, proves really challenging.
It’s also what forces the author to sort of overcorrect with Lenny and Miles’s characters–she’s grieving but she’s excessively quirky. He’s her guide through grief, but he’s struggling in ways with his own family that makes him a real oddball at first. Miles fares better in the end–he’s willing to have the patience of a saint to help Lenny, a girl he’s just met. Therapy for Lenny, by the way, is never discussed and feels like something she might benefit from–particularly in a group setting.
Promise Me Sunshine, like its main characters, has a hard time walking that line between grief and hope, sunshine and shadow. I liked Cara Bastone’s writing throughout, much as I did in Ready or Not–she writes that sort of teddy bear boyfriend on a high level. But overall I felt the push/pull of trying to walk that line throughout. It was always going to be a challenging thing to nail–Cara does a valiant job but I didn’t feel it quite came together.
My rating for Promise Me Sunshine
3.5 out of 5
My Romance Recipe Pairing
Pair Promise Me Sunshine with my Salmon and Edamame Hummus Bowls–Lenny needed some nutrition in her life and these salmon and grain bowls are so delicious they’ll nurture the body and soul.
Promise Me Sunshine Synopsis
Synopsis (from Amazon):
How do you find yourself after you lose the one you loved the most?
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • 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. Ever since cancer stole away her best friend, she has been completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with her best friend, and the ever-laminated “live again” list of things she’s promised to do to survive her grief. But maybe if she acts like she has it all together, no one will notice she’s falling apart.
The only gigs she can handle right now are temporary babysitting jobs, and she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. The only catch: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of. . . a walking version of the grumpy cat meme. Worse – he seems to be able to see right through her.
Surprisingly, Miles knows a lot about grief and he offers Lenny 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 void her best friend has left behind, but between late night ferry rides, midnight ramen, and a well-placed shoulder whenever she needs it, Miles just won’t stop showing up for her. Turns out, sometimes your life has to end to find your new beginning.
Buy Promise Me Sunshine for Kindle here.
