Baggage Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A three-POV sapphic family saga that turns a second-chance reunion into a book about grief, carried by the best character work of the series and undercut by an ending that hands too much forward to book four.

Best for: Readers already two books deep in the Soulmate Series who want an emotional gut-punch rather than a comfort read, and who accept a love story that shares the page with two other storylines.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — open door; romance.io has no band for this book, and reader spice ratings land at three out of five)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.2/5 — a 4.51 Goodreads average earned almost entirely from readers who already finished books one and two)

Tropes: Second-chance romance, queer found family, multi-POV ensemble, co-parents to lovers, grief and healing, first love, mature heroine, athlete heroine, long-history reunion, series continuation.

Baggage by Cass Morgan is the third book in the Soulmate Series, a self-published contemporary sapphic romance cycle about the Gallagher family, and it splits its 385 pages across three points of view: Sarah Gallagher, a few months short of forty-nine and still waiting on the happily-ever-after everyone around her already has; her daughter Lily, chasing a second Olympic gymnastics team; and Beth Walsh, who has spent two books doing the work and now finds out whether it was enough.

It carries a 4.51 average across 400 Goodreads ratings, a 2% did-not-finish rate on StoryGraph, and the highest score in a series whose ratings count halves with every instalment. That is the tension: Morgan’s best-reviewed book is also her most self-selected one. Both halves of that matter before you start.

What Is Baggage About?

Baggage is a contemporary sapphic romance in the strict sense — there is a central couple and they get their ending — but it is built as a family saga, and that decides whether you get on with it. The Gallagher books are an ensemble, each moving a different relationship to the front while the rest of the cast keeps living in the background, so book three opens on a household with two books of history already in place. Amazon files it under Lesbian Fiction before Lesbian Romance, and that shelf order describes what is on the page.

Sarah Gallagher is the emotional centre: the one who held the family together through every rearrangement and never got the thing she organised everyone else into having. Beth Walsh is her opposite number — the ex, the co-parent, the woman who left and then spent years becoming someone who might not. Lily is the third strand, no longer the teenager of book one, running out of runway on an athletic career while her first serious relationship asks questions she has no time for. Three first-person voices, and scope bought at the romance’s expense.

What Makes This Sapphic Family Saga Work

• The character work: Every StoryGraph rater who answered said yes to both “strong character development” and “loveable characters” — 100% on each — and character development is the phrase Amazon’s review summary pulls out most often.
• Lily’s arc: Readers who met her as a teenager in book one name her growth into an adult as the most satisfying thread here, several enjoying it more than they expected to.
• Grief written as grief: StoryGraph’s crowd-sourced warnings flag it as graphic, the moods come back 91% emotional and 73% sad, and reviewers describe crying at the epilogue rather than the love scenes.
• A reunion with two books behind it: Sarah and Beth’s second chance lands because readers watched it fail twice first — something a standalone reunion can only gesture at.
• The prose has caught up: Readers who followed the series from the start call this the best-written of the three, and no reviewer I found raises an editing complaint — unusual for self-published romance.

Book Synopsis

Sarah Gallagher is a few months short of forty-nine and has spent her adult life as the person other people’s love stories happen around. She has raised a daughter, kept a complicated queer family functioning through every reshuffle, and watched everyone she loves find the settled thing she was never handed. She does not consider herself unlucky. She considers herself patient. What she has not considered is whether patience is the problem.

Lily Gallagher has a plan and no spare time. There is a college gymnastics season to survive, a girlfriend who plays soccer at the same level of commitment, and one more Olympic cycle to qualify for. Her whole method is to put her head down and push, which works right up until her body and her relationship start making demands in the same week, and neither will accept being scheduled around.

Beth Walsh has spent years doing the unglamorous work: the therapy, the honesty, the slow business of becoming someone who does not run. What she has no way of knowing is whether it counts for anything until it is tested. Then an event none of them chose rearranges every relationship in the book at once, and all three women end up holding the same question from different sides — after everything, is the version of you that finally showed up the one anybody still needs?

My Review

The emotional force here is real, and I want to say that first, because it is the thing this book does better than almost any sapphic romance I have reviewed this year. Morgan does not treat feeling as a texture applied over a plot; the whole architecture is built to earn one reaction, and it earns it. StoryGraph’s readers tag it 91% emotional and 73% sad, and the reviews are full of people naming the page where they cried.

The second strength is the character writing, and it works for a structural reason rather than a stylistic one. Sarah at forty-eight is allowed to be tired, self-deceiving and occasionally unkind without the book apologising for her, and Beth is written as someone whose growth is real and might still not be enough — a harder proposition than a redemption arc. Lily gets the sharpest transformation: she stops reading as somebody’s kid and starts reading as an adult making adult decisions.

Where it struggles is a design choice rather than a craft failure. Three points of view across 385 pages means the romance readers came for gets about a third of the book. The lowest StoryGraph rating I found puts it plainly: that reader was “only truly interested and invested in Sarah and Beth”. Others circle it from friendlier angles — more of Beth’s interior life during the reconciliation, more room for the threads three POVs squeeze, more of the central event’s aftermath, which happens largely off the page. The ending compounds it: one four-star Amazon reviewer writes that “the ending of this book seemed quite incomplete,” and she is not wrong, because Lily’s storyline closes on a retirement and a breakup and the novel finishes on a preview of book four.

One expectation to reset, and it is the big one. Amazon sells this as A Second Chance Sapphic Romance and the branding promises comfort. What you get is a grief novel with a romance inside it. A character carried through the first two books does not survive this one, the loss drives most of what follows, and StoryGraph’s readers file grief and addiction as graphic content warnings, with death, cancer and alcoholism behind them. One Goodreads reviewer describes having “spent half the book in denial”. If you came for a warm reunion read, calibrate hard.

My honest note: The best book in this series and the one I would recommend to the fewest people, because it only works if you have read the other two. If you have, it is a genuine emotional event; if you have not, start at Balancing Act and come back.

Element	In Baggage
Central relationship	Sarah Gallagher & Beth Walsh — co-parents and exes with two books of shared history, reuniting
Core tropes	Second-chance romance, queer found family, multi-POV ensemble, grief and healing, first love, athlete heroine
Setting	Contemporary United States, across a college gymnastics season and an Olympic qualifying cycle
Heat level	3/5 — open door, emotional rather than frequent
Series	Soulmate Series book 3 — the romance resolves, other threads do not; book 4 confirmed for early 2027
Content notes	Grief and bereavement, death of a significant character, terminal illness and cancer, addiction and alcoholism, open-door sexual content

How Spicy Is Baggage?

A 3/5, and the sourcing needs stating because the usual source is empty. romance.io lists Baggage but carries no steam rating for it — the page still shows the placeholder for books waiting on their first one. What romance.io does band is series opener Balancing Act, at 3 of 5, “open door”: at least one intimate scene with the reader present, told plainly rather than clinically. Two sapphic bookstagram reviewers put Baggage itself at three peppers, which lands it in the same place.

The one thing worth flagging is that the spice does emotional work rather than escalating — one four-star reviewer’s only complaint was that she wanted more of it. No reviewer I found flags kink content, dubious consent, or anything beyond conventional open-door intimacy. If this is the band you want, Here We Go Again and Beyond the Blue sit at the same 3/5 and handle grief with similar seriousness.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you have already read Balancing Act and Breadwinner, you want a romance that risks something real instead of manufacturing a third-act misunderstanding, you like ensemble casts where the supporting characters have their own lives, and you are happy to cry.

You may want to skip it if: you are looking for a standalone, you want the central couple on most of the pages, you read romance specifically to avoid grief and bereavement, or you need every thread tied off by the last chapter rather than handed to the next book.

In short: the most emotionally ambitious book in the series and the least accessible one, in exactly the same measure.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (August 2026)

There is no viral moment here and no professional coverage at all. Baggage is self-published — Amazon lists the publisher as Cass Morgan — and it has no Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal or Booklist review, and nothing at The Lesbian Review, LezReviewBooks, Bookish Sapphic or I Heart SapphFic. The Reddit searches I completed returned no thread about this book or this series, though Reddit was rate-limiting heavily while I looked, so that is a partial read rather than a confirmed absence. BookTok searches surfaced no organic traction either. What is driving it is narrower: sapphic bookstagram and ARC reviewers who followed the series from book one, a Kindle Unlimited listing that makes it free to try, and category rank — #165 in Lesbian Fiction and #229 in Lesbian Romance when I checked.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): Character growth, first and by a distance. It is what Amazon’s review summary surfaces above everything else, and StoryGraph’s raters answered unanimously yes to both character questions — no dissent across 77 ratings, which I almost never see. Emotional impact is the close second, and readers are specific: they name the chapter, the epilogue, the moment they put the book down. Lily’s transition from teenager to adult draws its own praise, often from readers who did not expect to care. And several long-time readers say the writing has improved book over book — worth noting, because the usual complaint about indie series romance runs the other way entirely.

What readers argue about and complain about: The split focus, above everything. Three points of view means the reunion readers came for occupies about a third of the novel, and the objection surfaces at every rating level — the lowest StoryGraph score I found is a reader who only wanted Sarah and Beth, and several four-and-a-half-star reviews raise it as a wish rather than a flaw. Second: the ending, which closes Lily’s arc on a breakup and a retirement and finishes on a book-four preview. Third: key events happen off the page — two readers wanted more of the aftermath and felt the novel moved past it too fast. One reader wanted more spice. One raised something sharper: she felt pre-release ARC posts had given away enough of the structure to spoil her read, a real hazard for a book whose effect depends on not knowing. Opinions divide hardest on whether the central choice was right at all — some readers cycled through actual stages of grief before accepting it, others call it the bravest thing in the series.

The series question everyone should ask first: this does not work as a standalone and essentially nobody claims otherwise. The romance resolves; the series does not. Book four is confirmed for early 2027 on the author’s own store, with no title announced. On where to start: Balancing Act sits at 4.15 across 976 Goodreads ratings and Breadwinner at 4.24 across 780, so the series climbs as it goes — but the ratings counts fall by half each time, so most people who begin book one never reach book three.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I read Baggage as a standalone?

No. It is book three of the Soulmate Series and depends entirely on two books of history. Reviewers say so repeatedly and without hedging — start with Balancing Act.

How spicy is Baggage?

A 3/5. romance.io has no steam rating for this book, but it bands series opener Balancing Act as “open door”, and two sapphic bookstagram reviewers rate Baggage at three peppers. The scenes are explicit, infrequent, and written for emotional effect rather than heat.

Does Baggage have a happy ending?

The central romance resolves and readers describe the epilogue as satisfying. Other threads do not: one storyline ends on a breakup and a career decision, and the book finishes on a preview of the next instalment.

Is the Soulmate Series finished?

No. Cass Morgan’s own store confirms book four is coming in early 2027, with no title announced as of August 2026.

Is there an audiobook of Baggage?

Not yet. The author’s store lists audiobooks for Balancing Act and Breadwinner but only ebook and paperback for Baggage. Amazon shows no Audible edition and Libro.fm no listing.

If You Loved Baggage, Read These Next

If it was the grief that got you, Here We Go Again is the closest match on the site — a road-trip romance built around a dying mentor, at the same 3/5 heat. If it was Sarah, Beyond the Blue gives you an older widowed lead and grief the book sits with rather than resolves. For the reunion engine on its own terms, Then & Now runs first love and the second chance in one dual-timeline book. For more in this register, browse our sapphic second chance romance reading list or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Baggage is the book where Cass Morgan stopped writing a romance series and started writing a family. The character work is the best of the three, the emotional payload is genuine and independently reported by hundreds of readers, and the prose has quietly improved to match. It also gives its central couple only a third of its pages, leaves a major storyline unresolved for the next instalment, and cannot be handed to a new reader. That is a narrow recommendation, but within it the book is very good indeed. Check Baggage on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Baggage ranks as a high-performing indie sapphic family saga — emotionally ambitious and unusually well characterised, constrained by a split focus and an open ending, and best approached as the third act of a series rather than a romance in its own right.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

• ✓ 4.51 average across 400 Goodreads ratings
• ✓ Only 2% did-not-finish on StoryGraph
• ✓ Best-reviewed book in the series
• ✓ Score built on an already-invested readership

Romance ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ Reunion earned across three books
• ✓ Both leads allowed real flaws
• ✓ No manufactured third-act misunderstanding
• ✓ Shares the book with two other threads

Characters ★★★★★ 4.7/5

• ✓ 100% of StoryGraph raters say strong development
• ✓ Amazon’s top customer phrase is character development
• ✓ Lily’s teenager-to-adult arc singled out repeatedly
• ✓ Three POVs leave some threads thin

Writing ★★★★☆ 4.2/5

• ✓ No editing complaints anywhere in the reviews
• ✓ Long-time readers call it the series best
• ✓ Restraint around the hardest material
• ✓ Key aftermath handled off the page

Emotional Impact ★★★★★ 4.8/5

• ✓ 91% emotional and 73% sad on StoryGraph
• ✓ Readers name the exact chapter they cried
• ✓ Grief flagged as a graphic content warning
• ✓ Loss lands harder than the reunion does

Heat Level ★★★☆☆ 3/5

• ✓ Open door, explicit but infrequent
• ✓ Book one banded 3/5 by romance.io
• ✓ Two bookstagram reviewers rate three peppers
• ✓ No steam rating submitted for this book

Ending ★★★★☆ 3.7/5

• ✓ Central romance resolves properly
• ✓ Epilogue repeatedly praised
• ✓ Second storyline closes unresolved
• ✓ Finishes on a book four preview

Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 4/5

• ✓ Readers report thinking about it weekly
• ✓ Rewards a full-series reread from book one
• ✓ Book four will send readers back
• ✓ No audiobook for a second pass

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