Two Hearts, Two Mouths

by Reva Russell English

184 pages, Hardcover

Published August 1, 2026

Reviews

[Randi Ewing]

Reva Russell English’s Two Hearts, Two Mouths is a transporting reading experience. It is the story of Alma Carlile, who wakes up in a second version of her life and spends the next three years alternating between two realities, one full of disappointments and loss and the other of fresh starts and possibilities.

Russell English grounds her story in the routines of daily life–in kitchens and laundry and bike rides. Precise details and perfect, lovely descriptions anchor the two worlds Alma inhabits. An elderly couple waiting for a table at a diner are “stooped like cats being lifted by the scruffs of their necks,” and sorrow is “a small whirpool” pulling on Alma’s chest. A pre-dawn bicycle commute sets the scene for the story, but also gives the reader insight into Alma’s knack for noticing details, for basking in the beauty of ordinary things. What happens to Alma over the course of the novel is extraordinary, but the real power of the novel is how that extraordinariness is nestled in and threaded through her ordinary, daily, lived-in life. These quotidian details allow the reader to float between these realities as Alma does, and the result is a thrilling exploration of the questions of what if and what now.

Two Hearts, Two Mouths is a meditation on time and identity, on the choices we make and the choices made for us long before we enter the picture–those years and years of “sliding doors” that opened or closed in order to deliver us into one particular reality. Alma’s story is one of chance and inevitability, and how loss, love, and bodies reduce the distance between the two to the blink of an eye.

[Miranda]

Two Hearts Two Mouths is a beautiful immersion in the humanity of the two main characters, Alma and Lucky. Like many of us navigating complex life choices, Alma reckons with split feelings and behaves different in different contexts, shocking even herself. Reva's writing explores perspective, the fragility and fixedness of reality, and the trickle-down impact of our choices. It is a love story and exploration of Lexington and Kentucky, fun for anyone to read who is familiar with Lexington's nightlife or landscape. Throughout reading this book, the Greek chorus was like ancient wisdom, like a clever, playful friend enticing me to read the next chapter. So poetic and inspiring so much contemplation.