About the Book
-
Author:
- Ashley Poston
- Voices:
- Cis Boy
- Cis Girl
- White (Non-Specified)
First Impressions: Dance With Me
What’s Your Type? Bad First Impressions, Former Boy Band Members, Nepobabies, Small Town Life, Saving the Family Business, I Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Literally), Man Buns
Meet Cute: It’s In His Kiss
The Lean: Outta My Dreams, Into My … Bar
Dirty Talk: Love to Love You
We Need to Talk: Supermarket Flowers
Was it Good For You? Living A Teenage Dream
Content Warning: Sounds Like Love features themes of Illness and death of a parent, grief, and small-town struggles.
First Impressions: Dance With Me
While I like the cohesiveness of Poston’s romance covers, and there’s nothing particularly wrong about this one, it just doesn’t excite me. The colors are fun, though.
What’s Your Type?
- Bad First Impressions
- Former Boy Band Members
- Small Town Life
- Saving the Family Business
- I Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Literally)
- Man Buns
Dating Profile
Joni Lark left the small town of Vienna Shores years ago with the dream of becoming a songwriter. She’s since achieved that goal and then some, but she’s recently begun to worry that the well is running dry. And this year, there’s the added stress of her mother’s dementia diagnosis. She decides to turn her normal week-long vacation home into a month+ one, hoping being near the beach and in a town without the pressures of LA will help her find her spark again.
Sebastian Fell is the son of a world-famous rock star and a regular in the tabloids himself for being the “bad boy” in the boy band Renegade. Since wrapping a car around a tree and the band breaking up, he’s kept a pretty low profile, but one that seems to be filled with a whole lot of nepo-baby nonsense (and a severe lack of work ethic). But the world doesn’t know the real Sebastian …
Meet Cute: It’s In His Kiss
Joni attends a concert the night before leaving for home to hear a pop star sing her new hit single—a single that Joni wrote. When she enters the private box from which she plans to watch, she realizes that she’s not alone. And when the pop star points her Kiss Cam at the box, Joni throws caution to the wind and shares a kiss with none other than Sebastian Fell, even though she knows it’s absolutely not a smart idea.
Especially when it leads to them hearing each other’s thoughts.
The Lean: Outta My Dreams, Into My … Bar
Joni has far too many things going on in her life to add a relationship to the mix, particularly one with notorious bad boy Sebastian. But when she starts hearing a man’s voice in her head, a man who asks her to call him Sasha, Joni can’t help but be intrigued by his kind, thoughtful, and funny self (even if she questions her sanity at first). I can’t imagine having someone in my head like that, but I can see the appeal of such a deep connection. Of course, when the two decide to meet in real life, Joni isn’t sure that she can mesh the man in her head with the one standing in front of her. (Spoiler alert: Sasha is Sebastian.) As they work together to write a song, however, both begin to open up to each other, and their connection isn’t just a magical fluke.
Dirty Talk: Love to Love You
Poston’s spicy scenes always rank on the lower end of the Scoville scale, but the chemistry between her leads can be palpable. It might be an unpopular opinion, but sometimes less is more.
There was just his mouth against me. His hands. His body. The way his lips pressed against my neck. The way his fingers slid under my dress, the calluses on his fingertips rough, making my skin prickle with gooseflesh as he slipped off my underwear and then inched my dress up. He kissed the inside of my thighs, and the soft flesh just below my navel, and then he pressed his mouth against me. I knew he had good diction in his singing, but his tongue made cunning work of the talent. I stifled a moan, biting my hand, as he pulled one of my legs over his shoulder for better purchase.
Ed. note: I pulled this quote from a review copy. The final text might be different.
Ms. Perky’s Prize for Purplest Prose
I adore Poston’s writing and the emotion she can invoke with her words. It’s never too flowery, even when it could easily veer into that territory. She knows how to tug at the heartstrings, in ways both good and sad, and her small details never fail to disappoint.
I wanted to know everything about him, really. I wanted to know all the things even tabloids weren’t privy to—the things they ignored. I wanted to know the mundane things, whether he liked top sheets and if he wore his socks inside out because the seam bothered him. All the things that people took for granted.
Ed. note: I pulled this quote from a review copy. The final text might be different.
We Need to Talk: Supermarket Flowers
Although Sounds Like Love is a rom-com focused on Joni and Sebastian, a large part of the book is also dedicated to Joni’s relationship with her mother and her struggle with her mother’s slow decline. Poston is a deft hand at including real (and real sad) topics in her writing, and Sounds Like Love is not the first of her books to make me cry, but having had a parent who had dementia and ultimately passed away, when I tell you I sobbed.
And the truth was, there was no last good day. There was just this slow fade, bit by bit, like a sun sinking below the waves of the Atlantic. There were beautiful moments—golden rays of light and warm orange shades, dipping into deep, heartbreaking reds. The last good day never came, or maybe it had, and I missed it as I watched the sunset, slow at first and then too quickly. Much, much too quickly. And when the last ray of light shimmered over the water at the end of it all, I held her hand and I watched it with her, until the light had gone and night set in.
Ed. note: I pulled this quote from a review copy. The final text might be different.
Was it Good For You? Living A Teenage Dream
I wasn’t fully prepared for this book to hit me like it did, but I’m not mad at it for doing so. Joni and Sebastian are the thing of teenage dreams, and if I can’t grow up to marry Lance Bass or Justin Timberlake—the former for one obvious reason and the latter because we all know he ruined the tour, the fact that I’m happily married notwithstanding—I’ll gladly read about it in books.
FTC Full Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Berkley, but got neither a private dance party with Tom Hiddleston nor money in exchange for this review. Sounds Like Love is available now.
