Sounds Like Love

Sounds Like Love is a contemporary romance novel. Titles that fall under this genre classification embrace tropes, lean into familiar narrative plot structures, and employ literary archetypes. In addition to leaning into genre tropes, romance novelists often subvert these tropes to make playful commentaries on stereotypical notions of romantic love.

Throughout Sounds Like Love, Poston both embraces and toys with the enemies-to-lovers romance trope. Joni Lark is skeptical of Sebastian (Sasha) Fell when they first meet onstage at the Fonda Theatre. She considers him cocky and disingenuous—more concerned with fame than authenticity. This is why she’s so shocked when she discovers that Sebastian is Sasha, the endearing, compassionate voice in her head. Through this development, Poston reinvents the forced proximity trope. While initially forced into physical proximity onstage, Joni and Sasha are later compelled to spend time together when they gain mysterious access to one another’s consciousnesses. Even before they start working together on their new song in Vienna Shores, they communicate telepathically. Unable to escape one another’s voices, they gradually discover a deep bond. Because Joni and Sasha are musicians, the novel can be classified as a professional romance story, too, as Joni and Sasha work together to revitalize their careers.