Book Review: Sounds Like Love

Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston

Joni is burned out. Joni is homesick. Joni has songwriter’s block. Joni is NOT hung up on her ex, Van, who reappears looking good. And she’s certainly NOT thinking of a certain semi-retired pop-star who she kissed at a concert (blame the kiss-cam).

 What better way to find her love for music again than alongside her music-obsessed family at their music venue The Revelry beachside!?

Our Romantic Heroine

Joni Lark is a songwriter who left her sweet lil Outer Banks beach town, Vienna Shores, for the bright lights of Los Angeles and Hollywood to chase her songwriting dreams. She also wants to make up for what she believes her mother missed out on—a successful career in the music biz.

Wild Horses in OBX

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash

As the book begins, Joni was riding the high of a hit song with the latest pop star of the moment, so she should be “living the dream.” Yeah, everyone told her she should be happy, but she’s lonely, y’all. All she wanted to do was go home and spend time with her family and best friend, Gigi. When Joni finds out her mother is diagnosed with dementia, she goes home for one “last good summer” with her family.

For Our Music-Obsessed Readers

One of my favorite parts of the book is how the author Ashley Poston captures the experience of music—being part of a crowd listening together at a concert, being transported when you sing with someone you love, writing a song just to express a feeling.

She captured the power of music and how it feels like music is the air you breathe when you’re a teenager scream-singing in the car with nowhere to be.

Who is the Romantic Hero?

He is a hot, former boy-band member turned songwriter hopeful who has emotional damage. Also he accidentally gets entwined the in the weirdest potential situationship of all time—a telepathic connection with a woman he kissed once, and they are hearing songs together AND their thoughts.

Sebastian Fell was compared to Hozier in the book. For my One Direction fans, however, I was not getting Hozier vibes. Since Sebastian was described as the bad boy of a boy band (Renegade, giving 1D vibes), I was picturing Zayn Malik at first, because the character was kind of quiet and shy at first. Like Zayn, for Sebastian, people interpreted his demeanor as arrogance, yet underneath, he was sweet and not as confident; he also did not love that world-tour life, which is my impression of Zayn (just based on some interviews, etc.). As the book progressed, I also added in some Harry Styles-vibes with the wavy hair and magnetic presence…Sebastian’s were “cerulean eyes” mentioned many times. In the end, Sebastian, aka Sasha, is his own person and Joni has to be willing to move past first impressions and the tabloid veneer to find out how the real Sasha is (spoiler alert—he is sweet and vulnerable and creative).

Ya Girl’s Feeling Burned Out

I was pleasantly surprised by the depth in Sounds Like Love and how much I related to the storyline about how it feels to experience burnout. Everyone around Joni is telling her she is living the dream, and that makes it hard to tell others she is struggling creatively and personally, feeling burnt out and dragged down by life.

Living a creative life, as many others have said, means that you also have to “fill the well” and just be a person, who sings and walks at the beach and loves people and spends time with family and friends.

I loved how the book handled burnout without the whole book needing to be about burnout.

Especially when I am feeling burned out, I don’t really want to read a book that is like, I feel sad and empty and lost and like I’m not good at my job and will never be creative again. Yes, we may feel like that sometimes and we want to feel seen, but experiencing that message along with a dose of the power of music and a sweet, sexy love story make it SO MUCH BETTER!

Quotes I Loved

“That was my hometown in a nutshell. It was a place you loved and a place where you built your life and a place you could never escape, even when you did.” p.42

“In that moment, I realized that music could be everything. It was the feeling of existing, dancing, reveling in the pouring rain. It was magic. The kind of magic that whispered, You have a hundred years to live, in that joyous infinite yelp that tricked you, for a moment, into believing that you could be infinite, too.” p.48