I have been reading romance novels now and again over the past few years, maybe half a dozen. But now that I get advance listener copies as a bookseller, I am “trying out” audio books at a much faster rate. Many of these books happen to be romance, and since I am curious about many romance authors I have yet to try… I end up finding romances to read (and not to read) at a faster pace than other genres. One of these ALCs was Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston, an author I was wanting to try because of her most lauded book, The Seven Year Slip and her blending of romance with magical realism. Sounds Like Love was published on June 17.

Blurb: Joni Lark returns home to the Outer Banks of North Carolina every summer from her super successful LA career as a songwriter. But this year is different: she’s going to be facing her mother’s dementia after a year of only hearing about it. It’s even worse than that. Her best friend is keeping secrets, her parents are closing the family music venue, Joni secretly hasn’t been able to write a thing in months, there’s a hurricane on the way… and there’s a voice in her head. Not just a voice, but an actual person talking to her from another state. So, what’s love got to do, got to do with it?

There is a caveat here: I am not a great audio-listener. I ended up listening to this book because I was on a road trip. Normally, I like to switch from listening to reading when I figure out that I actually want to read a book (except for when I switch to an audio book that is proving to be a beast to read). I ended up coming back home and buying two more Ashley Poston books instead of buying this one for literally the last two chapters. I heard it out while I was cleaning the house.

Speaking of the road trip. My husband was supposed to be sleeping and had his own ear buds in, but after hours of Sounds Like Love, I realized that he was listening to it much more than sleeping or doing his own thing. I think we both felt the same about it really (though he has zero interest or experience with romance novels): the book was okay, adequate enough that we wondered what was going to happen and we kept listening. It might have something to do with the audio, for me. I might have been more into it had I been reading it on the page because that is just who I am; my imagination works better with the written word.

Still, in the end, I’m going to give this one a rating of adequate. Which, contrary to the harshness one of my co-workers was reading in that word, means I liked it. It delivered what I expected. Except for Jane Austen, I have yet to read a straight-forward romance with impressive writing on the level with a more literary genre. (Not to say it’s not out there. I have not yet found it. And quite frankly, I don’t think most romance readers want that.) Romance tends to be breezy and easy to digest as opposed to poetic and acrobatic. I miss descriptive writing when I read a lot of real-genre-y and real modern writing. I miss being dropped into a setting and figuring out what’s going on and who people are based on the context (as opposed to all these in-brain tell-alls).

Sounds Like Love has a little bit, at least, of the setting and the figuring things out, which is why I enjoyed it. It also has a whole lot more than just a romance (like Emily Henry’s latest, but different). It has its meet-cute and all that, but also a person (30!) dealing with their mother’s dementia and also a career crisis. There is some depth. Some actual romance (as opposed to just smut). (While I’m thinking about it: this is an “open door” romance, which means that the reader does go into the bedroom for the sexy stuff. But there isn’t a whole lot of it, and not the play-by-play that I have seen in other books, lately. The spice rating is 3/5.)

A couple things I was not a fan of in this book. First, it was repetitious. I found myself saying aloud, rather frequently, “You already told us that!” Goodness, even its signature quote is repeated at least four times. But I also mean that information and Joni’s feelings are often given upwards of two times. I don’t need that. It’s just extra words that should have been cut. Second, the plot was obvious. Now, there is a certain amount of obviousness that is inherent in romance and in anything meant to be cozy, but I found that this one didn’t leave any room for mystery, at least for my read. And the ending is emblematic of this; it just goes on and on and on in the wrap-up until I was like “I get it! I got it a long time ago!” Then again, I’m sure some people are happy to stay in this space?

I was also nit-picking about the deets of the location. It takes place in North Carolina, mostly on the Outer Banks. Now, I live in the middle of North Carolina, minutes from the airport where Joni first steps into the state. I have only been a visitor to the OBX, just like Poston when she was a kid. But there were some glaring things that bothered me. I won’t go into any of it except that the trip from Raleigh to the OBX can not on any day be done in two to three hours. How hard was that to Google? Nor is Raleigh the place you’re going to fly to, anyhow. The airport of choice would probably be Norfolk, Virginia (especially considering the horses are in the north of the OBX) or even a small airport in New Bern. Perhaps Raleigh was cheaper, but Gigi just takin’ it easy on a normal day to drive all the way to Raleigh and back is just not real. And then the wild horses running through town… Well, I ended up giving Poston that one, because this is magical realism and the horses work as a little magical. Travel to the airport does not.

Lastly, I have already said I am not an audio book fan, but I am learning things about audio books. Most audio books do not get top-notch artists to do the read. I haven’t looked into Patti Murin except to see that she’s an actress and is from New York. Let me just say that her voice for the male lead is not half as bad as the one I just listened to before this, but I was still distracted by it sometimes. And her North Carolina accent was all wrong. (There is a wide range of Southern accents, even NC accents, and hers is more like Texas, maybe? Which is a long way from here.) Thanks to Murin for not giving the main character an accent. But no thanks for getting some of the interpretation wrong. I am one of those weirdos who just want the voice talent to read the book without voices, just with feeling and understanding.

A caveat: since this book has the element of two characters being in each other’s heads, the audio book is probably not the best way to read it. Sometimes I did not know if we were dealing with quotations or italics or what, and it was unclear if it was said in a head, out loud, or kept a secret. Some people like the audio for the very-occasional singing. Ehn.

I liked that the chapter titles were lyrics, and I tried to sing all of them as they passed. There is a lot of fun musical reference in this book.

If you’re a romance genre person and you haven’t tried Poston, I would run, not walk, to your local bookstore to buy something of hers. I can’t directly speak to her earlier work (yet) but Sounds Like Love is cute and satisfying. Plenty of people are going to like it and it might be a good way to lean toward romantasy by going just one extra step into magical realism. Then again, maybe just stay in magical romance. It’s not going to ask much of you, but Poston at least will deliver on life, love, and a nice little story that even a husband pretending to sleep might listen to.