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A songwriter with writer’s block and a struggling musician discover the only way to shake off their sudden, inexplicable telepathic connection is to finish the song that has been evading them both, in the next magical love story from Ashley Poston.**

Jolene Byrd is a hitmaker—the songwriter who comes up with melodies that fill your heart and get stuck in your head. She should be on top of the world, but she’s burning herself out—fast—and she’s not sure she has another song to give.

When she’s called home for a slap-dash wedding between her brother and her best friend, her parents break the news that in the wake of her mother being unwell, they’ve decided to close The Revelry, her family’s music venue where she grew up. She can’t possibly concentrate on writing when her life is falling apart.

Then a melody comes to her—half-formed and lyric-less—and when she chases after it, she realizes it’s not just a song stuck in her head…but a voice, too.

The voice belongs to a frustrated, wry musician—Sasha—who insists he’s on the brink of a comeback if only he can write a hit song. The only thing Jolene and Sasha can agree on is that they’ll do anything to get out of the other’s head. Including collaborate on a song—the one to get her out of her writer’s block and him his new hit.

As they weave perfect notes together and chart the course of the chorus, the melody takes shape into a something that will change both of their lives forever—if it doesn’t end in heartbreak first.

Autorentext

Ashley Poston is the New York Times bestselling author of A Novel Love Story, The Seven Year Slip, and The Dead Romantics. A native of South Carolina, she lives in a small gray house with her sassy cat and too many books. You can find her on the internet, somewhere, watching cat videos and reading fan fiction.

Klappentext

**AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ∙ A hitmaking songwriter and a bitter musician share a startling and inexplicable connection that they’ll do anything to shake, in the next sparkling, magical book from the New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Year Slip and A Novel Love Story.
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As featured in The New York Times ∙ People ∙ The Washington Post ∙ USA Today ∙ NPR ∙ ELLE ∙ Marie Claire ∙ E! News ∙ Katie Couric Media ∙ Woman's World ∙ theSkimm ∙ Brit + Co ∙ Yahoo! Life ∙ She Reads ∙ and more!

Joni Lark has a secret. She’s one of the most coveted songwriters in LA, and yet she can’t write. There’s an emptiness inside her, and nothing seems to fill it.

When she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, she hopes that the sand, the surf, and the concerts at The Revelry, her family’s music venue, will spark inspiration. But when Joni gets there, nothing is how she left it. Her best friend is hiding something, her mother’s memories are fading fast, and The Revelry is closing.

How can Joni write when her world is leaving her behind?

Until she hears it. A melody in her head, lyric-less and half-formed, and an alluring and addictive voice to go with it—belonging, apparently, to a wry musician with an emptiness of his own.

Surely, he’s a figment of Joni’s overworked imagination.

Then a very real man shows up in Vienna Shores. He’s arrogant and guarded—nothing like the sweet, funny voice in Joni’s head—and he has a plan for breaking their inconvenient telepathic connection: finish the song haunting them both and hope they don’t risk their hearts—or their secrets—in the process.

Because that melody, the one drawing them together . . . what if it’s there for a reason?

Leseprobe
1

Kiss Me (in the
Milky Twilight)

I was second-guessing the heels.

The plan was to dip into the concert at the Fonda Theatre, say my hellos, and ditch before the after-party. I had an early flight home tomorrow-it was a vacation I took every summer back to the Outer Banks-but when Willa Grey offers you a VIP ticket to her Los Angeles show, you don't say no. I hadn't seen her since her new album took off this spring. It had changed her life-a surprise world tour, a platinum record, international fame-and it had changed my life, too, since I had written her most popular song. Now there were rumors of a VMA performance this year, a Grammy nomination-hell, even a coveted invite to the Met Gala. I'd written hit songs before, both because I was good at it and because I'd lucked into a particular subsection of popcorn pop songs at the exact right time, but nothing quite like this. Willa had been dragged off to so many tour stops and late-night talk show appearances, we hadn't gotten a chance to chat much since "If You Stayed" hit the Billboard top ten, so I felt like I had to at least drop by, stay for a song or two, and remind her to call her therapist . . . the normal girl's girl thing.

So here I was, sweating in a theater with broken AC, squashed between damp strangers, with my heels rubbing blisters onto my feet. (I could have taken off my shoes, I supposed, but I grew up in a music venue, so I knew what was on these floors.) People around me sang Willa Grey's songs with their entire chests, swaying back and forth with their hearts in one hand and their cell phones in the other.

And I just wanted to go to bed.

I used to love concerts. They were my happy place-my home. Being in the thick of the audience. Singing at the top of my lungs to my favorite songs. Being in love with the idea of existing in this moment. Or, really, being in love at all.

I'm not sure what changed-me, or the music?

Shakespeare once wrote, "If music be the food of love, play on." And four hundred years later, a Tinder date quoted it back to me-unironically. And that wasn't even the worst part. Clearly the man hadn't read the rest of Orsino's soliloquy, because just after that line he laments, "Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die." He wants to be done with love, the unrequited torture of it. The promise of a happy ending expounded in three cruel words.

Maybe that was it . . . there wasn't magic to the music anymore. There was just my brain listening for the verse, the pre-chorus, the bridge, the rhymes with fire, desire, higher-

Needless to say, that Tinder date was a one-and-done sort of situation. My best friend, Gigi, asked if I at least had sex with him-he was some sort of social media celebrity, but in Los Angeles you could spit and hit one, so it wasn't that big a novelty-and she seemed very disappointed that I'd left the restaurant without him.

I'm no connoisseur of love-I learned early on in this industry you couldn't have it all, a Great Love and a Great Career, so I chose, and I never looked back.

Well, I never looked back often.

I knew the feeling of love. Bright and buoyant and easy. Physical and visceral, emotional and impossible. I believed that. It was why I moved out to Los Angeles in the first place, to chase my dreams of being a songwriter. You didn't relocate to one of the most expensive cities in the world to wait tables and rub elbows with greasy music moguls if you weren't a little bit enchanted by the idea of it. And you certainly didn't write hit songs about girlfriends in suede heels and endless summer nights if you were that jaded.

And now, I was here. A thirtysomething on the main floor of the Fonda Theatre, surrounded by people fresh out of college and dunked in glitter, screaming along as Willa Grey skipped…