ARC Review: Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston Published by HQ on 17th June 2025
Genres: Magical realism, Fiction / Romance / Paranormal / General, Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, Fiction / Women, Contemporary, Fiction / Fantasy / Romance, Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
Pages: 384
Format: ARC
Source: Netgalley
Buy on Amazon
A hitmaking songwriter and a bitter musician share a startling and inexplicable connection that they’ll do anything to shake, in the next sparkling, magical book from the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip and A Novel Love Story.
Named a Most Anticipated book of Summer 2025 by The New York Times ∙ People ∙ USA Today ∙ Marie Claire ∙ E! News ∙ Brit + Co ∙ Yahoo! Life ∙ She Reads ∙ and more!
Joni Lark has a secret. She’s one of the most coveted songwriters in LA, and yet she can’t write. There’s an emptiness inside her, and nothing seems to fill it.
When she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, she hopes that the sand, the surf, and the concerts at The Revelry, her family’s music venue, will spark inspiration. But when Joni gets there, nothing is how she left it. Her best friend is hiding something, her mother’s memories are fading fast, and The Revelry is closing.
How can Joni write when her world is leaving her behind?
Until she hears it. A melody in her head, lyric-less and half-formed, and an alluring and addictive voice to go with it—belonging, apparently, to a wry musician with an emptiness of his own.
Surely, he’s a figment of Joni’s overworked imagination.
Then a very real man shows up in Vienna Shores. He’s arrogant and guarded—nothing like the sweet, funny voice in Joni’s head—and he has a plan for breaking their inconvenient telepathic connection: finish the song haunting them both and hope they don’t risk their hearts—or their secrets—in the process.
Because that melody, the one drawing them together . . . what if it’s there for a reason?
Almost 4 stars
Joni Lark, our songwriter FMC is struggling to get her groove back. She’s stuck, her well has run empty and is also homesick. All of this is related to her mother’s diagnosis of Dementia and Joni feeling an outsider in her own family. She’s now back to her hometown, a little coastal town in North Carolina for the summer from Los Angeles and if everything was already not going well enough (sarcasm), she now has a man’s voice in her head.
Sebastian ‘Sasha’ Fell, bad boy of the former boy band group Renegade is now trying to make a come back. He has his own family issues; he is the son of a famous rock star and his childhood which was not the best, to say the least. Now he has a woman’s voice inside his head and it is very present!
First off, what a fascinating concept; telepathy and a ear worm tune stuck in their heads.
I really enjoyed both Joni and Sasha as characters, their struggles are perfectly ordinary in a extraordinary setting and completely understandable and you really root for these two to have the issues resolved and get their HEA.
I also really enjoyed the musical/song references and adored the chapter titles!
The issue of dementia was dealt with fairly well, it’s extremely difficult seeing the person you love have this disease and the impact it has on the person and their family. The grief of losing your parent to especially this kind of health condition is devastating and Ashley Poston managed to make the reader really how heartbreaking it is.
I loved our couples first meeting, it had a magical quality to it and then of course the magic happens. Their romance is bit fast paced but at the same time, there’s a little bit of a triangle and Joni trying to understand herself. The whimsical quality is especially present in the first half of the book and I enjoyed how their relationship went from hostile strangers to friends to lovers. They were very sweet together.
“…You know you’re in love when they are the first person you want to hear in the morning and the last person before you go to bed…” -Sasha
“I loved the way he saw me. I loved myself in his eyes.” -Joni
Quibbles: View Spoiler »
Overall, a lovely read with an adorable couple with family issues and magical telepathy to help them find each other.
Tropes:
Singer x songwriter
Small Town Romance
Telepathy
Familial health issues
Magical realism