Two Hearts, Two Mouths, Reva Russell English

Description

Two Hearts, Two Mouths
Hardcover – January 13, 2026
by Reva Russell English

Two Hearts, Two Mouths is a richly imaginative hardcover novel that blends speculative fiction, literary realism, and queer feminist inquiry into a story about choice, identity, and desire. For three years, Alma Carlile has lived two lives, switching daily between parallel versions of Lexington, Kentucky. In one world, she is unhappily married. In the other, she is deeply in love with someone else. When Alma becomes pregnant in both realities, the fragile balance she has maintained begins to collapse.

Faced with the physical and emotional consequences of her bifurcated existence, Alma devises a plan to end the back-and-forth once and for all. But choosing one life means abandoning the other, and the risk of becoming permanently trapped in the wrong world looms large. As Alma confronts herself across realities, the novel asks what it truly means to want something—and what it costs to claim it.

Running alongside Alma’s story is that of Lucky Parnell, her elder and closest friend. Lucky, a successful restaurateur, navigates her own desires across the same two worlds, though without the knowledge that she exists in both. Longing for intimacy, connection, and spiritual fulfillment, Lucky wrestles with the fear that age has placed love forever out of reach. When the possibility of happiness appears, she must decide whether doubt will outweigh desire.

Threaded throughout the novel is a Greek chorus with a distinctly Kentucky voice, commenting on the strangeness, beauty, and unknowability of life. Through memory, humor, and longing, Two Hearts, Two Mouths becomes a meditation on parallel lives, chosen family, and the limits of self-knowledge.

Bold, tender, and philosophically playful, this novel explores the tensions between what women want, what they are allowed to have, and who stands beside them when the choice finally comes.