49 pages • 1-hour read
Sounds Like Love
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of chronic illness.
Music and Songwriting as Self-Expression
Joni Lark’s artistic frustrations complicate her ability to identify and express her emotional experience. Since Joni was a little girl, she has understood herself through music. Her childhood experiences at her parents’ music venue, the Revelry, and her innate appreciation for songwriting grounded her in reality and herself. Her childhood passions led her to a career in the Hollywood music industry. However, in the narrative present, Joni has lost her ability to write music. The last hit she wrote was 10 years ago, when she was “younger and drunk on the kind of longing that came with spinning around to her favorite song,” back when she was someone who believed that “music truly was the food of love” (15). Now in her early thirties, Joni fears that she’s lost her creative inspiration and talent for good. Her protracted writer’s block compromises her identity because she has lost her ability to artistically articulate her internal experience.
Joni’s burgeoning love affair with Sebastian (Sasha) Fell and her month-long stay in Vienna Shores reignite her passion for music and songwriting. Until her mom’s recent dementia diagnosis, Joni was consistently “writing more and more and more” songs simply because she wanted to (26). Songwriting is Joni’s soulful expression of truth, beauty, meaning, love, and selfhood. Losing this inspiration thus destabilizes her. In the narrative present, she must focus on a new project, collaborate with Sasha, and reconcile with her hometown and family to redefine what music means to her on her terms. This journey begins with Joni’s trip back to Vienna Shores. The setting immerses her in the musical inspirations of her childhood. Simply returning to the Rev, for example, has the power to rekindle Joni’s inherent love for music:
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 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 (48).
The allusion to magic echoes Joni and Sasha’s magical telepathic connection. The romantic counterparts become mentally and emotionally connected. In turn, they use this mysterious bond to collaborate on a new musical project—one that reminds Joni of the magic of being alive and sharing life with someone she loves. Together, Joni and Sasha create a new, harmonious means of expressing themselves as individuals and sharing their love for each other with others. Artistic creation, the novel implies, is more than a hobby. It can offer one the opportunity to translate complex emotions and experiences for the world.
The Journey Toward Healing and Self-Reclamation
Joni’s first-person narrative traces her gradual personal growth journey over time. Although Joni is in her thirties, she’s experiencing a crisis of identity at the novel’s start. Her inability to write new songs, fear over her mom’s tenuous health condition, unresolved feelings for Van Erickson, sadness over the Rev’s imminent closure, and burgeoning love for Sasha are all experiences that compel Joni to explore her heart and mind anew.
Joni’s summer stint in her North Carolina hometown, Vienna Shores, compels her to face her insecurities, fears, and questions so she can reclaim her identity. Unhappy and unfulfilled in LA, Joni’s trip home changes how she sees her past and her future. Upon returning to Vienna Shores, Joni feels as if her “life and experiences [are] nebulous”; she doesn’t “know how to hold them down long enough to inspect them, and even if [she] did…[she isn’t] sure if [she is] ready to” (156). Joni’s fear of self-reflection hinders her healing and self-reclamation journey. She knows she has unresolved questions and internal conflicts, but avoids confronting these aspects of her interiority out of self-preservation. The longer she’s in Vienna Shores, however, the less she can ignore her pain, sorrow, and confusion.
Spending time with her mom, falling in love with Sasha, and rediscovering her musical passion helped Joni regain a sense of self. Her reflections on her transformation in Chapter 37 convey how these experiences have remade her:
I began to wonder if I didn’t even know myself, if maybe my feelings were connected to losing Van…but I think I would have felt the same if I’d followed him to Boston. If I went anywhere. Because I wrote that song for the girl I was, and the one I could’ve been if…if I had stayed (304).
Joni is experiencing a revelation in this scene of dialogue with Gigi. She’s reconciling with the young woman she used to be. Doing so ushers her toward a higher state of being. The novel suggests that making amends with one’s past and owning one’s former selves can lead to healing and renewal. Joni is identifying who she has been in years past and who she wants to become in the future. In turn, she finds internal peace.
The novel’s end implies that Joni has found happiness because she has healed from her sorrow and embraced her true self. The final chapters depict Joni spending time with her family, saying goodbye to her mom, building a life with Sasha, and devoting her life to the Rev. These life events are catalyzed by Joni’s newfound self-assuredness.
The Transformative Power of Love and Intimacy
The evolution of Joni and Sasha’s intimate relationship conveys how deeply love can transform the individual. At the novel’s start, Joni isn’t sure how she feels about love anymore. Van broke her heart nine years ago, and Joni hasn’t pursued any committed romantic relationships since. Furthermore, because of her lyricist vocation in LA, Joni believes that she’s “no connoisseur of love—[she] learned early on in [the music] industry you couldn’t have it all, a Great Love and a Great Career” (7). Joni chose work over love—a decision that closed her heart to intimacy. However, when Sasha’s voice mysteriously appears in her head, Joni reawakens to the possibilities that love can create for her.
Joni and Sasha’s relationship is built on mutual love, trust, compassion, and understanding. In addition, the romantic counterparts discover a unique musical bond. To Joni, music has always been a way to express deep emotions; furthermore, “most of the emotions [she draws] on when writing [stem] from some sort of love” (101). Love, therefore, connects people in mysterious ways. It’s a form of music, art, and passion. The more Joni and Sasha open up to each other as artistic collaborators, the stronger their multifaceted bond becomes.
Joni and Sasha’s song “Sounds Like Love” symbolizes their profound connection. The way that Joni describes her and Sasha’s performance of the completed song underscores its symbolic resonance:
After weeks with the song in our heads, it came to our fingers as easy as breathing. We knew the notes, sure and bright and loud, surer than we knew ourselves. He played the chords, and I the well-worn melody, our fingers in conversation with each other without a word (320).
The song has brought the lovers together, but it’s also an expression of their abiding affection for one another. Just as music has given Joni a sense of meaning and purpose, so has her intimate connection to Sasha. When she rediscovers her love for music, she discovers how to love more deeply and honestly.
Joni and Sasha’s forced proximity throughout the novel ultimately leads them to a “happily-ever-after” ending. These romance novel tropes affect a hopeful and redemptive narrative mood. Despite all that Joni has been through, she has found happiness, joy, and comfort in her relationship with Sasha. Further, their new relationship at the novel’s end promises to lead the lovers to an idyllic future together.
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