Returning to Love Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Q: Is Returning to Love a standalone?

Mostly. It is a sequel to Training for Love with the same couple, but the backstory is recapped early and the book ends with its own happily-ever-after, so you can follow it without book one.

Verdict: A married-couple second-chance romance with some of the most honest depression writing in sapphic fiction, held back by a long, repetitive middle and a reconciliation that happens mostly off the page.

Best for: Readers who want a realistic story about mental illness inside a marriage, and who can forgive a slow middle, a lot of boardroom subplot and a heroine who comes close to cheating.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — a few explicit scenes and long stretches without; romance.io has no entry yet)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5/5 — our read of the advance copy; reader ratings aren’t in yet)

Tropes: Second chance with a spouse, marriage in crisis, established relationship, mental-health representation, age gap, butch/femme, CEO heroine, emotional infidelity, dual POV, holiday chapters.

Returning to Love by Amanda Kabak is the sequel to Training for Love, a Bella Books contemporary lesbian romance set in Chicago two years into the marriage of Charlie, a butch personal trainer living with bipolar depression, and Elizabeth, the CEO eight years her senior — and it begins at the point where the work each of them loves starts to matter more than the promise of honesty they made each other at the altar.

It is out on 20 October 2026 at retailers, after a 15 October release direct from Bella, and runs 278 pages in paperback. That means there are no reader ratings yet: Goodreads lists the book with zero, and this review is written from an advance copy. What does exist is the reception of book one, and it predicts this sequel’s divide closely. That divide is worth understanding before you start.

What Is Returning to Love About?

Returning to Love is a second-chance romance in which nobody has to meet. Charlie and Elizabeth have been together six years and married for two, so the question is not whether they will fall in love but whether they can stay in it. That changes what the genre has to offer. There is no meet-cute and no first kiss to wait for; the tension comes from estrangement, secrets and the slow erosion of a routine that used to hold them together.

Charlie lacks the words to say she is sliding back into depression, and she is afraid of what saying it would cost her. Elizabeth assumes that being shut out means being unwanted, and she goes looking for attention somewhere else. The book alternates between them in close third person, chapter by chapter, and that structure is its best tool. You always know what each wife is hiding, which turns every “I’m fine” into dramatic irony rather than a mystery.

What Makes This Sapphic Marriage Romance Work

The depression writing: It is specific and physical — the pep talks in the shower, the dread of a medication change, the inner voice that keeps telling Charlie to do better. The author’s acknowledgments say it comes from lived experience, and it reads that way.
Two wives at fault: The book never makes one of them the villain. Both break the same promise in parallel, which is rarer in romance than it should be.
Domestic texture: Meal prep, a sacred Wednesday run, an argument in a grocery store, Thanksgiving and Christmas at Charlie’s mother’s house in Michigan. The marriage feels lived in, which is the whole point of an established-couple romance.
A handful of standout scenes: A cut finger during a cooking video followed by cornbread as an apology, and Elizabeth getting a depressed Charlie into bed, are the emotional peaks of the book.
Book one’s strength, carried forward: Readers of Training for Love overwhelmingly praised its mental-health portrayal, and the sequel goes further in exactly that direction.

Book Synopsis

Six years after a beginners’ marathon group brought them together, Charlie and Elizabeth have a loft in the South Loop, a standing Wednesday run along the lake and a marriage built on one rule: no secrets. Charlie’s training business is finally growing. Elizabeth’s tech consultancy is big enough that people want to buy it, and big enough that her staff have opinions about whether she should sell.

Then Charlie takes on two social-media clients who promise her a much bigger audience, and the Wednesday run is the first thing she gives up for them. She starts posting her wife online without asking. Worse, she can feel the old fog of depression coming back, and she tells nobody — not Elizabeth and not her psychiatrist — because admitting it feels like failure and like a burden she has no right to hand over.

Elizabeth notices the distance and reads it as rejection. At work, a young woman she has been mentoring is warm, admiring and always available for one more late night of coding. Elizabeth tells herself it is harmless. Charlie tells herself she has it under control. With autumn turning to winter and two holiday trips to Michigan ahead, both of them are keeping exactly the kind of secret they swore they never would, and the question is which of those secrets will break first.

My Review

The best thing about this book is that it takes depression seriously as something that happens to a marriage, not only to a person. Kabak writes Charlie’s slide from the inside with real precision: the bargaining over a dose, the energy it takes to shower, the shame that makes her hide the one thing her wife most needs to know. I have read a lot of sapphic romance that gestures at mental health. Very little of it is this exact, and none of it is sentimental.

The second strength is fairness. Elizabeth is not a saint caring for a sick wife, and Charlie is not simply a victim of her illness. Each makes a series of small, defensible choices that add up to betrayal, and the dual POV lets you sympathise with both while watching them do it. The domestic detail helps enormously. When the late chapters hit, including a frightened phone call that reaches Elizabeth at exactly the wrong moment, they land because the ordinary life around them has been so well built.

Where it struggles is pace, and this is the same complaint readers made most often about book one, now in a different form. Roughly chapters 8 to 22 repeat one loop: one wife hides something, the other suspects, someone says “I’m fine,” and both retreat into long passages of solitary thought. “Let’s not talk about it” happens at least three times. Around that sit the secondary problems. The business subplots — acquisitions, a staff no-confidence vote, Instagram growth plans — run long and dry. The young mentee is thin, mostly flattery with a name, and her abrupt exit lets Elizabeth off lightly. And the repair, after a long and careful slide, is mostly summarised in an epilogue rather than shown.

One expectation to reset: the blurb sells a second-chance romance, but on the page this reads closer to women’s fiction about depression inside a marriage, with the romance concentrated in the opening and closing chapters. Amazon files it under LGBTQ+ family-life fiction, with no romance subcategory at all, which is a fair description. If you want a warm reunion story, calibrate. If you want an honest book about loving someone through an illness, it gives you more than the blurb promises.

My honest note: A brave, truthful book about depression inside a marriage, wrapped around a romance that spends most of its length apart. If you need the couple together on the page, this will frustrate you. If you want the marriage tested for real, it is worth the slow middle.

Element	In Returning to Love
Central relationship	Charlie & Elizabeth — butch personal trainer and tech CEO, two years married and six years together
Core tropes	Second chance with a spouse, marriage in crisis, established relationship, age gap, butch/femme, emotional infidelity
Setting	Chicago — a South Loop loft, the Loop and the lakefront path — plus holidays in Michigan, from autumn to the following May
Heat level	3/5 — a few explicit scenes, long stretches without by design
Series	Sequel to Training for Love (2022) — same couple, readable on its own, HEA
Content notes	Depression, bipolar disorder, suicidal ideation, a parent’s suicide (recalled), panic attacks, emotional infidelity, lying within a marriage, medication changes, explicit sexual content, brief diet talk

How Spicy Is Returning to Love?

A 3/5, and that number is ours. romance.io has no entry for this book yet, so it comes from my own read of the advance copy. There are a few explicit scenes between Charlie and Elizabeth — a wedding-night flashback early, a scene on the couch with a strap-on in the first half, and the epilogue — and long stretches with nothing at all. That absence is deliberate: depression takes Charlie’s desire away, and the book makes that part of the story rather than skipping past it. Amanda Kabak’s own submission to us lists the book as high heat; on the page it reads moderate.

The element to know in advance is the near-affair. Elizabeth kisses her mentee over several nights and comes close to sleeping with her, so there is heat in that storyline too, but it is never consummated. Nothing beyond that needs flagging. For the same heat in a second-chance romance, All This Time and Hideaway sit in the same band.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want mental illness written honestly rather than as a plot device, you like romances about staying together rather than getting together, you enjoy close, domestic detail, and you liked Training for Love for its mental-health story more than its romance.

You may want to skip it if: depression or suicidal ideation is hard for you to read about right now, you need the couple together on the page for most of the book, you have little patience for boardroom subplots and a repetitive middle, or any form of cheating is a dealbreaker.

In short: a truthful book about a marriage under real strain, which asks you to accept a long separation before it gives the romance back.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

Right now, almost nothing — and that is the honest headline. The book has zero ratings on Goodreads, no listing on StoryGraph or romance.io, no Amazon reviews and no Libro.fm or audio edition yet. Searches turn up no Reddit thread, no BookTok video and no trade or blog review. The only reader voice in public is one line on the Bella Books product page, credited to a reviewer named Fiona S., who calls it “not your typical sappy sapphic love story” and says it is worth the effort. The publisher chose that quote, so treat it as marketing. I will refresh this section after release, once real readers have had their say.

What exists instead is book one. Training for Love came out from Bella in 2022, sits at a 3.73 Goodreads average across about 80 ratings, and has 26 written reviews. Those reviews predict this sequel’s divide closely.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The mental-health portrayal, first and by a distance. Around twenty of book one’s 26 written reviews praise how it handles Charlie’s bipolar disorder and Elizabeth’s panic attacks, and “realistic” is the recurring word. Several readers also liked the running structure and the link it draws between exercise and mental health, and some found both leads fully drawn. The sequel doubles down on all three.

What readers argue about and complain about: The romance, above everything. About fourteen of those 26 reviews say the two women spend too little time together, the chemistry is thin, or the book reads more as a mental-health story than a love story. That is the exact risk of the sequel too, which keeps its couple apart for most of its length. Second, the ending: around seven readers found book one’s resolution rushed, and this book’s summarised repair invites the same note. Third, Elizabeth’s best friend Carmen, whom about eight readers found inconsistent. A handful also objected to how often book one spells out its butch/femme framing. The split is real: some readers rate the series highly precisely because it puts mental health first.

The sequel question worth asking first: can you read it cold? Mostly, yes. How the two met, Charlie’s history and Elizabeth’s panic attacks are all recapped early, and the book resolves with a happily-ever-after. But Training for Love is short — 174 pages, or about six hours on the Tantor audiobook narrated by Nicol Zanzarella — and it makes Charlie’s relapse here land much harder. If you have the time, read it first.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Returning to Love a standalone?

Mostly. It is a sequel to Training for Love with the same couple, but the backstory is recapped early and the book ends with its own happily-ever-after, so you can follow it without book one.

Do I need to read Training for Love first?

No, but it helps. Book one is short, at 174 pages, and knowing Charlie’s history makes her relapse in the sequel hit much harder.

Does Returning to Love have a happy ending?

Yes. It ends with an on-page epilogue and a happily-ever-after for Charlie and Elizabeth, with the marriage rebuilt. Much of the repair is summarised rather than shown.

Is there cheating in Returning to Love?

An emotional affair, not a physical one. Elizabeth kisses a younger woman she mentors over several nights and comes close to sleeping with her, but it is not consummated. Readers who treat any infidelity as a dealbreaker should know before starting.

How spicy is Returning to Love?

A 3/5 by our read. There are a few explicit scenes between the wives and long stretches without, because depression is part of the story. romance.io has no rating for it yet.

What are the content warnings for Returning to Love?

Depression, bipolar disorder and suicidal ideation, a parent’s suicide recalled from the past, panic attacks, emotional infidelity, medication changes and explicit sexual content. The publisher’s own note flags depression and suicidal thoughts.

If You Loved Returning to Love, Read These Next

The closest match on the site is The Marriage Rebound, which watches a sapphic marriage fray with the same honesty and noticeably more heat. If the therapy and repair are what you wanted more of, A Million Dollar Marriage puts separated spouses and their therapist on the page. And for mental health handled with care in a much lighter romance, Fly with Me pairs an anxious ER nurse with a pilot.

For more in this register, browse our established-couple sapphic romance list, our guide to second chance sapphic romance, or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Returning to Love tries something the genre rarely attempts: a romance about keeping a marriage alive rather than starting one. Its depression writing is exact and unsentimental, its two wives are flawed in parallel, and its domestic life is fully built. It is also slow through a long middle, weighed down by boardroom subplots, and quick to summarise the repair it spent nearly three hundred pages earning. Whether that trade works depends on what you came for — but a reader who wants an honest book about loving someone through an illness will find one here, with a happy ending at the end of it. Check Returning to Love on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Returning to Love ranks as an honest Bella Books marriage-in-crisis romance — unusually truthful about depression inside a relationship, slowed by a long, repetitive middle, and best approached as a mental-health story with a romance around it rather than as a light second-chance romance.