By KBC Associate :max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/ashley-poston-053025-ef793f038bc74fedadfc28aeb7cb2e71.jpg?ssl=1 "Ashley Poston Teases Her 2026 Summer Romance Is Influenced by This Classic Novel (Exclusive)")
NEED TO KNOW
- Ashley Poston exclusively teases her 2026 summer romance to PEOPLE, revealing it’s inspired by a classic novel and will include time travel elements like The Seven Year Slip
- She also shares her upcoming novel Sounds Like Love (out June 17) explores telepathy and burnout as a songwriter and musician get the same song stuck in their heads
- Poston is partnering with Sonic and First Book to promote literacy in conjunction with the release of the restaurant’s new Sweet Topped Lemonades
Ashley Poston is looking to the classics for inspiration for her next summer romance!
Ahead of the June 17 release of her fourth adult romance novel, Sounds Like Love, Poston spoke with PEOPLE about her partnership with Sonic for the launch of their summer Sweet Topped Lemonades, which will also help get books into the hands of children across America via the nonprofit First Book. In addition, the author also teased her next summer romance, which is expected to be released in 2026.
According to Poston, her fifth adult romance read will draw inspiration from a beloved classic children’s novel. “My romance for next summer, which I can kind of talk about … I can say it’s Secret Garden-esque,” she tells PEOPLE.
“I am so excited,” the author adds. “It’s going to have some time travel-ish elements in it too, so I’m going back to The Seven Year Slip scenarios.”
Released in 2023, Poston’s The Seven Year Slip is a New York Times bestseller that follows Lemon and Iwan, unconventional roommates who share the same apartment despite being separated in time by seven years. The author says she’s a big fan of the time travel trope and is looking forward to revisiting it again.
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“It’s just the dichotomy of like, who you are versus who you were, plus the person you love, versus who they are and who they were,” she explains.
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In addition to her new summer romance, Poston teased that she’s actually working on three books at the moment — but the other two are top secret for now. One thing she can share is all of the details about her upcoming release, Sounds Like Love.
“Sounds Like Love is about a burnout songwriter and a has-been musician who find themselves inexplicably telepathically linked when they can’t get a song out of their heads,” she explains. “And so I’m playing with the idea of telepathy and also how that relates to intimacy and getting to know someone, but I also explore burnout and what that’s like.”
“Burnout is a hot button topic right now, but it’s also very prevalent because it feels like the conversation is shifting less from, ‘Oh we’re artists doing this creative endeavor’ to ‘we are creators creating this content,'” she adds. “And I feel like that kind of makes burnout harder because you feel like you have to keep on making content and you have to keep on pushing forward and pushing forward.”
In crafting her latest story, The Dead Romantics author explains she gave herself permission to slow down a bit. She says the book is “basically me telling myself that it’s okay to slow down and take some time and be nostalgic about the things that you love — don’t just keep looking forward, you can look around you, too.”
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Sounds Like Love comes out June 17 and is available for preorder now, everywhere books are sold.