Both Can Be True - by Jessica Guerrieri (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Two sisters reconnect on a long-overdue girls' trip to Mexico--just as a woman from their small town back home goes missing, setting off a chain of revelations that forces them to confront old traumas, fractured marriages, and the fragile threads holding their lives together.

Told in alternating perspectives, Both Can Be True follows Mare and Frankie--two sisters in their late thirties navigating motherhood, marriage, and identity in a post-pandemic world. Mare is the hyper-responsible older sister, mother of a neurodivergent preschooler, and married to a husband who's long since checked out. Frankie is a charismatic, sober bookstore owner raising two teenage daughters and struggling to maintain boundaries between her sobriety, motherhood, and the messy realities of womanhood.

Together with three friends, they embark on a girls' trip to Mexico to celebrate Frankie's ten-year sobriety milestone. But back home, their husbands go camping and stumble upon what they believe might be the body of Brie Hoover--a woman from their town and Frankie's AA circle. What follows is a slow unraveling of secrets and shifting loyalties, set against the backdrop of a deeply rooted female friendship.

As the sisters reckon with the emotional weight of caregiving, trauma, and who they've become outside their roles as mothers and wives, Both Can Be True asks: Can we be good mothers and still want more? Can we love our partners and still feel trapped? And what happens when the support systems we've so carefully constructed start to crack?