Michelle Dsouza
Where do I even start with this one.
Let me set expectations first, because they matter for this book. Promise Me Sunshine is not literary fiction and never pretends to be. It isn't reaching for philosophical depth, and it isn't vain about its own cleverness either. What it does, and does well, is hold all of us in its palm and let us be ourselves. Bastone knows exactly what kind of book she's writing, and that self-awareness is half of why it works.
Structurally, this is a fascinating little machine. It's almost entirely dialogue, with very little narration carrying the load. That construction usually fails. Books that lean this hard on dialogue tend to feel thin, like you're watching characters talk in a void. Here it doesn't, because the pacing carries you through without ever forcing it or dragging, and because the voices are distinct enough to hold the weight the prose isn't trying to. It's fast, the sentences are short, nothing is vivid or ornate, and that simplicity consistently serves the accessibility rather than costing the book emotional depth. This is a deliberate, controlled choice, not a limitation.
The grief structure is the smartest thing Bastone does. This is a grief story wearing a romance as its outer layer, and the two aren't just stitched together, they grow from the same root. Lenny and Miles fall for each other while trying to save each other. "He walked into hell and dragged me back out." But Bastone never lets the romance neatly resolve the grief, which is the trap most books like this fall into. The grief keeps showing up, in small things, threaded all the way through, and the love blossoms from inside it rather than erasing it. That honest tension is what gives an otherwise light book its real weight.
Lenny is the fully drawn character here, and she runs the show completely. Her grief, her wit, her chaotic mind, all of it is rendered with specificity. Miles, by contrast, functions more as the steady, patient vehicle for her healing. You see parts of him as he reveals himself to her, but it's clear whose story this is. I'd normally count a love interest who exists mostly to hold space for the protagonist as a flaw, but in a book this committed to one woman's interior journey, it reads as a deliberate framing rather than an oversight.
The predictability is worth talking about honestly, because it's predictable from the very first pages and it does not matter at all. This is the advantage of a feel-good book done properly. There's no pretense, no sense of being misled, you know exactly where it's headed and you happily ride there alongside them. Comfort fiction is supposed to feel good, and the reassurance of knowing the shape of the ending is part of what makes it safe to feel something while you're grieving. Done badly, predictability is a weakness. Done like this, it's the entire point, and a genuine strength.
My honest criticism, and this is personal taste, is the spice. I'm a closed-door reader by preference, so the roughly five pages of detailed foreplay weren't for me, and I skimmed. The moment Bastone referred to his manhood as "his pal," I was fully out. It's a small thing, but the cutesy language clashed with the emotional sincerity of everything around it.
Fair warning on tone: this book runs on a lot of Gen Z energy. Lenny is as quirky as they come, and if you don't enjoy over-dramatic, chaotic characters, this might not land for you. For me, it was infectious. The banter made me laugh out loud more than once, and that levity is doing real structural work, giving you somewhere to breathe between the heavier grief beats.
I listened on audio, and Alex Finke carried the whole damn book. I ran it at 2x speed, which I recommend, and even sped up she captured every emotion in it. Every sigh, every heartache, every grief-stricken thought Lenny carried. In a book that's mostly dialogue, the narrator is doing an enormous amount of the characterization, and Finke delivers it. I've already ordered a physical copy, which is the highest compliment I can give an audiobook.
At its core, this book takes your grief-stricken, broken heart, heals a small part of it, and sets you down among other grieving hearts. It reminded me that as I move through my own grief, the happy, smiling people around me are carrying theirs too, in the only ways they know how. Two moments I'm taking with me: Lenny inventing a quick, kind future with every new person she meets, judgment left at the door, and Miles closing his eyes to savor a moment, committing it to memory.
I'd never read Cara Bastone before. Consider me converted.
"The only way out is through."
Originally posted at www.goodreads.com.
Where do I even start with this one.
Let me set expectations first, because they matter for this book. Promise Me Sunshine is not literary fiction and never pretends to be. It isn't reaching for philosophical depth, and it isn't vain about its own cleverness either. What it does, and does well, is hold all of us in its palm and let us be ourselves. Bastone knows exactly what kind of book she's writing, and that self-awareness is half of why it works.
Structurally, this is a fascinating little machine. It's almost entirely dialogue, with very little narration carrying the load. That construction usually fails. Books that lean this hard on dialogue tend to feel thin, like you're watching characters talk in a void. Here it doesn't, because the pacing carries you through without ever forcing it or dragging, and because the voices are distinct enough to hold the weight the prose isn't trying to. It's fast, the sentences are short, nothing is vivid or ornate, and that simplicity consistently serves the accessibility rather than costing the book emotional depth. This is a deliberate, controlled choice, not a limitation.
The grief structure is the smartest thing Bastone does. This is a grief story wearing a romance as its outer layer, and the two aren't just stitched together, they grow from the same root. Lenny and Miles fall for each other while trying to save each other. "He walked into hell and dragged me back out." But Bastone never lets the romance neatly resolve the grief, which is the trap most books like this fall into. The grief keeps showing up, in small things, threaded all the way through, and the love blossoms from inside it rather than erasing it. That honest tension is what gives an otherwise light book its real weight.
Lenny is the fully drawn character here, and she runs the show completely. Her grief, her wit, her chaotic mind, all of it is rendered with specificity. Miles, by contrast, functions more as the steady, patient vehicle for her healing. You see parts of him as he reveals himself to her, but it's clear whose story this is. I'd normally count a love interest who exists mostly to hold space for the protagonist as a flaw, but in a book this committed to one woman's interior journey, it reads as a deliberate framing rather than an oversight.
The predictability is worth talking about honestly, because it's predictable from the very first pages and it does not matter at all. This is the advantage of a feel-good book done properly. There's no pretense, no sense of being misled, you know exactly where it's headed and you happily ride there alongside them. Comfort fiction is supposed to feel good, and the reassurance of knowing the shape of the ending is part of what makes it safe to feel something while you're grieving. Done badly, predictability is a weakness. Done like this, it's the entire point, and a genuine strength.
My honest criticism, and this is personal taste, is the spice. I'm a closed-door reader by preference, so the roughly five pages of detailed foreplay weren't for me, and I skimmed. The moment Bastone referred to his manhood as "his pal," I was fully out. It's a small thing, but the cutesy language clashed with the emotional sincerity of everything around it.
Fair warning on tone: this book runs on a lot of Gen Z energy. Lenny is as quirky as they come, and if you don't enjoy over-dramatic, chaotic characters, this might not land for you. For me, it was infectious. The banter made me laugh out loud more than once, and that levity is doing real structural work, giving you somewhere to breathe between the heavier grief beats.
I listened on audio, and Alex Finke carried the whole damn book. I ran it at 2x speed, which I recommend, and even sped up she captured every emotion in it. Every sigh, every heartache, every grief-stricken thought Lenny carried. In a book that's mostly dialogue, the narrator is doing an enormous amount of the characterization, and Finke delivers it. I've already ordered a physical copy, which is the highest compliment I can give an audiobook.
At its core, this book takes your grief-stricken, broken heart, heals a small part of it, and sets you down among other grieving hearts. It reminded me that as I move through my own grief, the happy, smiling people around me are carrying theirs too, in the only ways they know how. Two moments I'm taking with me: Lenny inventing a quick, kind future with every new person she meets, judgment left at the door, and Miles closing his eyes to savor a moment, committing it to memory.
I'd never read Cara Bastone before. Consider me converted.
"The only way out is through."
Originally posted at www.goodreads.com.