Promise Me Sunshine

Promise Me Sunshine is a 2025 novel by American novelist Cara Bastone. A contemporary romance about grief, change, and finding joy, Promise Me Sunshine centers on the story of Lenny Bellamy as she copes with the death of her best friend. By employing many classic tropes of contemporary romance, Bastone explores themes of Learning to Live With Grief, The Importance of Seeking and Accepting Help, and Caring for Oneself to Care for Others.

This guide refers to the 2025 Penguin e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, mental illness, suicidal ideation, substance use, sexual content, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Helen “Lenny” Bellamy works as a babysitter in New York City but recently has only been able to take on short-term work because she has been consumed by grief for her best friend, Lou Merritt, who died of cancer a few months ago. Lenny and Lou were best friends since they met in kindergarten, and they shared an apartment as adults. Lenny helped Lou get through two cancer diagnoses and grueling treatments, and she often refers to Lou as the love of her life. Since losing her, Lenny’s life has been in a free fall, and she feels unable to cope with the grief and the missing space that Lou has left in her life. Lenny carries around a laminated list that Lou gave her, which contains a list of things she can do to “live again.” She hopes that checking off items from the list will help her get back to living her life after Lou’s death.

Lenny takes a weekend job babysitting for a busy single mother named Reese Hollis and her rambunctious seven-year-old daughter, Ainsley. While Reese and Ainsley love Lenny, Ainsley’s uncle Miles—who lives in the apartment upstairs and is constantly checking in on the Hollises—is worried about Lenny’s qualifications. Miles often questions Lenny about her methods, and her often-disheveled appearance leads him to wonder if she is in a bad situation, but his view of her starts to change when he sees a book about grieving fall out of her backpack.

One night, Miles follows Lenny to the Staten Island ferry, where she often goes to sleep since she is avoiding the apartment that she and Lou shared. Lenny ends up telling him about what happened to Lou and how she is dealing with grief, and Miles shares that he is a “grief expert.” Lenny later learns that Miles’s mother and cousin died in a car accident 10 years earlier, and his father—who is also Reese’s father—kept Miles’s existence a secret from his family until he died a year ago. Miles came to New York City to help his father in his last months, and he has stayed because Reese and Ainsley are his only family and he wants to connect with them. Though he worries about Lenny’s ability to take care of Ainsley while dealing with grief, Miles also sees how easily Lenny can connect with his niece and wants to build a relationship with her, too.

After Lenny’s weekend babysitting Ainsley is over, Miles approaches her with a proposal. He offers to help Lenny learn to live with her grief if she will come back to babysit Ainsley and teach him how to connect with his niece. Lenny doesn’t think that Miles can help her with her problems, but he learns about Lenny’s “Live Again” list and helps her check off her first item, so Lenny accepts his help. Over the next weeks, Miles is there whenever Lenny needs him. He feeds her, gives her a place to stay, and, most importantly, listens to her talk about Lou and her grief. The two become close friends, and Lenny helps him strengthen his connection with Ainsley, though Miles’s relationship with Reese remains tense.

Miles challenges Lenny to do things that are good for her, even when she doesn’t want to do them, eventually leading her to check off items on her list, make new friends, and have new experiences. Lenny’s journey with grief is not linear, and she has bad days along with good days. After visiting the Met, a place that was important to Lou, Lenny has a mental health crisis and contemplates ending her life on the Staten Island ferry. She calls Miles, who finds her there and helps bring her back to safety.

As Lenny and Miles’s friendship grows, so does their romantic interest in one another. However, Lenny fears what will happen if she confesses her feelings for him, noting the complicated relationship they already have and the precarious nature of her mental health. When she finally tells Miles what she is feeling, he confesses that he also has feelings for her but suggests that they wait to act on them. Miles wants to be sure that Lenny can stand on her own without him before they begin a relationship. Once she recognizes this, Lenny begins to take hard steps toward bettering her life. She also helps Miles and Reese reconcile, showing Reese how all Miles wants to do is care for her family. Miles shows this to Reese for himself when he and Ainsley perform a choreographed dance together at her school’s talent show, and the half-siblings begin to figure out how they can be part of one another’s lives.

Lenny starts to accept that while her grief will change, it will always be with her. She recognizes that finding joy in her life is a way to honor Lou without forgetting her. Toward the end of the novel, Lenny cuts off her long hair and donates it to a charity that makes wigs for children with cancer, showing that she is no longer letting grief get in the way of her life. Once Miles sees this, they kiss and begin their romantic relationship in earnest. Lenny helps Miles move out of his old apartment, and he suggests that it is time for her to move out of hers. Though she has been terrified to even enter the apartment she shared with Lou, she knows that she needs to do it to move on with her life, and she even asks others to help her go through it.

When they finish checking off the Live Again list, Lenny reveals that Lou did not write it for her; instead, she wrote it for Lou years earlier. Lou had only given it back to Lenny shortly before her death, wanting Lenny to follow it to remember how to live. Lenny unfolds the list to see a note she never noticed before in Lou’s handwriting, telling her to “[g]et over it already, loser” (300), and she knows that Lou understood that a list alone wasn’t going to help her get over her grief. With this help from Lou and all the other help from Miles, Lenny learns how to continue living her life.