Ashley Poston and the Hidden Score of Sounds Like Love

By Valentina Prieto. (IG @_pekeprieto) / Photos Ashley Poston.

In Sounds Like Love, Ashley Poston does not use the music as a background: she just builds the whole damn plot with it. It’s the heartbeat, the structure, the secret handshake.

“The music and the prose are surprisingly similar,’’ she reminds me. “A song narrates a tale as deeply as a book. Not so verbose, but brevity is the essence of wit.” Novels and songs? Same DNA, different clothes. 

Every art form, for Poston, is a sneaky love letter. A romance, actually. With a person, a thought, a place, a situation. She’s not sounding profound. She just is. She grew up around Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, and Almost Famous. “That my parents are to thank”, she shrugs. 

Meet Joni Lark. Pro songwriter. Dream job secured. Confidence intact. Until it isn’t. “I just wanted her to know who she is. Then shake that up,” Poston explains. Enter Sebastian Fell. Former boyband golden boy. Current emotionally complicated adult. Poston knows the trope and deploys it with complete intention: “It can’t be a rockstar romance without a little boyband trauma. That’s literally part of the genre,” she says. Then she flips it. 

Joni and Sebastian don’t flirt as well. They challenge each other. “I employ the love interest as a foil. Someone who helps the main character to learn what she needs to learn.” Sometimes that comes with ghosts. Sometimes with time travel. In this case, telepathy. Obviously. 

Poston also does not sugarcoat the act of writing. “I hit a wall. Burnout. Deadlines. I dropped it and ran back to my safe space. Fanfic.” That break? Pure oxygen. “It reminded me of what it’s like to write for me.” You can sense that breath in the novel. Even the chapter titles originate from a playlist she crafted as she wrote. Some literal. Some just vibe checks. (“I’m Just a) Cheeseburger in Paradise” doesn’t even have an actual cheeseburger in it. It just made sense. “Turns out a lot of songs don’t have their own titles. So that ruled out a few.” 

The supporting cast comes alive around Joni. Gigi is built with the help of her best friends. “They’re grounded, funny, wise for their age.” ” And yes, they’d pick me up from the airport, wearing a pickle costume.” Another frequency comes from Joni’s mom. A woman once held on by music is now confronted with early-onset dementia. Poston pens her with soft precision. 

Sounds Like Love is a story about what we leave for the things we think we want. And the way music, memory, and connection echo long after the last note. 

“If music be the food of love, play on,” she says. So we do.

Listen to the full playlist of the book here, and discover more of Ashley Poston at her website.