Promise Me Sunshine

Promise Me Sunshine falls into the genre of contemporary romance. Although the novel deals with serious subjects, such as grief, complicated family dynamics, and mental illness, it is underpinned by lighthearted and comedic moments. Contemporary romances are categorized by their happy endings and familiar plotlines but often focus on the main characters’ personal growth and the obstacles they must overcome to achieve their happy ending. As in Promise Me Sunshine, most contemporary romance heroines and heroes are flawed; these narratives often show protagonists helping each other overcome barriers to not only becoming romantically involved but also being better, happier people.

Just as contemporary romance novels rely on familiar narrative structures, they also often feature tropes, archetypes, and common situations, such as friends-to-lovers relationships, marriage-of-convenience plotlines, and quaint settings. Promise Me Sunshine uses many conventions typical of contemporary romance novels, including the forced-proximity trope, in which continually being in the same settings and situations forces Lenny and Miles to confront the feelings that they had been trying to avoid. Promise Me Sunshine is also a “workplace romance,” in which the main characters have a professional relationship in addition to their romantic one. Though workplace romances vary widely in their plots, settings, and time periods, books in this subgenre are defined by the tension between characters’ romantic interests and their professional duties, such as Lenny’s working relationship with Miles’s family. The subgenre of workplace romance heightens the stakes of romantic conflict, as characters in these novels have more at stake than their hearts alone.

Promise Me Sunshine also falls into the subgenre of “grief romance.” Though many contemporary romance novels depict characters struggling with grief, grief romance in particular is a subgenre of romance novels that deals with characters connecting as they overcome shared grief together, highlighting the role of love in learning to live in the aftermath of tragedy and loss. Grief romances often begin with a main character struggling to live while facing the worst of their grief after the loss of a family member, friend, or even part of their lifestyle. With the help of love and the assistance of someone who has also typically experienced great grief, the main character does not overcome their grief but learns to cope with it and experience joy along with this sadness. Promise Me Sunshine explores a very literal interpretation of this common plotline in grief romances, as Miles explicitly agrees to help Lenny process her grief, and she often refers to him as her “grief wingman” (66). Miles uses his own experiences with loss as a blueprint to coach Lenny through the aftermath of her best friend’s death, mentioning how he wished someone would have offered him help during the worst of his grief. Other novels such as Ashley Poston’s The Dead Romantics, The Seven Year Slip, and A Novel Love Story; Yulin Kuang’s How to End a Love Story; Emily Henry’s Happy Place; Ellie Palmer’s Four Weekends and a Funeral; and Sarah Adler’s Mrs. Nash’s Ashes also fall within this subgenre. Overall, these novels present grief as a complex and ever-changing emotion that can often be soothed with the help of other meaningful relationships.