Love Me Like You Shouldn’t Review — Is It Worth Reading?

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Verdict: A short, very hot forbidden romance between a grieving therapist and her famous client, with chemistry to spare, undercut by a book that names the ethical line and then barely deals with crossing it.

Best for: Readers who want explicit age gap heat and a forbidden setup they can enjoy as fantasy, and who won’t need the professional consequences taken seriously.

Heat level: ★★★★★ (5/5 — explicit and plentiful)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.4/5 — a 3.72 Goodreads average, a lower 3.28 on StoryGraph, and an ethics complaint that dominates the low ratings)

Tropes: Therapist and client, forbidden love, age gap, celebrity and civilian, secret relationship, widow heroine, grief, instant chemistry, dual POV, Blissverse cameos.

Love Me Like You Shouldn’t by Harper Bliss is a standalone age gap romance in her loosely connected Blissverse, a self-published forbidden love story set in California, where Dr. Nicola Forbes, a 54-year-old therapist still grieving her wife, finds herself falling for Avery Hall, the young Hollywood actress who has just become her client.

It holds a 3.72 average across roughly 1,080 Goodreads ratings, but StoryGraph readers are harsher at 3.28, and 13% of Goodreads ratings are one or two stars. Bliss herself calls the relationship ethically indefensible and says the novel is about what happens after the wrong choice. Whether the book actually delivers that is the whole argument, and it is worth understanding before you buy.

What Is Love Me Like You Shouldn’t About?

This is a contemporary forbidden romance built on the most loaded version of the trope: a professional relationship with a written code against exactly this. It is also a grief novel. Nic lost her wife, Lois, and has organized the years since around routines and boundaries, which is what makes the premise work on paper — the woman who has built her whole life on lines is the one who crosses the worst one.

Avery is on the other side of that desk: a rising star struggling with the pressure of being famous and queer, looking for help rather than romance. The book runs on dual first-person POV, so you get both women’s heads — Nic’s guilt and grief, Avery’s loneliness — and, per a good share of readers, not quite enough of either to make the leap feel earned.

What Makes This Forbidden Age Gap Romance Work

• The heat: romance.io bands it at the top, “explicit and plentiful,” and Bliss’s own shop lists nine spicy chapters. Readers who loved it name the chemistry first.
• The setup: A widowed therapist and a famous client is a premise with real voltage, and readers who read for forbidden tension say it delivers.
• Nic’s grief: The loss of her wife gives the book its emotional floor, and several readers say it lingered with them.
• It moves: At about 63,000 words it is short, and 65% of StoryGraph readers call it fast-paced.
• The audiobook: Abby Craden narrates, and readers who mention her mostly praise her.

Book Synopsis

Dr. Nicola Forbes has done everything right for a very long time. She has a respected practice, three decades of clients who trust her, and a life arranged, since her wife died, around keeping things in their place. Her boundaries are professional and personal, and she has never had reason to doubt them.

Then Avery Hall books an appointment. Avery is young, talented and newly famous, and the combination of Hollywood attention and being openly queer in it is starting to crush her. She needs somewhere safe to say that out loud. Nic is meant to be that place. Instead, from the first session, she feels something she has not felt since Lois — and knows exactly what it would mean to act on it.

What follows is a short, charged book about the gap between knowing better and doing better. Nic has every professional reason to refer Avery elsewhere and every personal reason not to. Avery has her own reasons to want more than an hour a week. The question the novel sets itself is not whether they will cross the line — the title settles that — but what it costs them when they do.

My Review

The chemistry is real, and I want to say that first because the rest of this is mostly about what surrounds it. Bliss has been writing older women falling for younger ones for a long time, and she knows how to put two people in a room and make the air change. The sessions crackle, the tension of a relationship that cannot be spoken about outside that room is genuinely erotic, and when the book stops holding back it does not hold back at all.

The grief is the other thing that works. Nic is not a predator in a cardigan; she is a widow who has been quietly sleepwalking since her wife died, and the way Avery wakes her up is the book’s most affecting thread. Readers who rated it highly repeatedly say it stayed with them, and it is the part of the novel that earns its title rather than just using it.

Where it struggles is the thing it chose to be about, and this is not a niche objection — it is the complaint behind most of the low ratings. At least ten Goodreads reviewers say the therapist–client ethics are raised and then waved through, and two of them write as people who work in mental health, one noting plainly that Nic should simply have referred Avery on. Around that sit the structural problems. Six readers find Nic walking away from a thirty-year career after a handful of sessions unearned. Seven say the relationship runs on lust rather than connection. Five say the characters stay thin, which StoryGraph echoes: only 42% of its readers call the character development strong. The book is short, and it shows.

One expectation to reset: the marketing promises a reckoning with an indefensible choice, and readers largely did not get one. The consequences arrive late and gently, and the HEA asks you to accept a very neat professional exit. If “forbidden” is what drew you, you will get the fantasy in full. If you were hoping for a serious novel about what crossing that line does to people, calibrate before you start.

My honest note: A hot, fast forbidden romance with a genuinely moving grief story underneath it, and not much else holding the premise up. If a therapist crossing this line is a hard no, no amount of chemistry will fix it. If you can read it as fantasy, the heat and the grief are worth the afternoon.

Element	In Love Me Like You Shouldn’t
Central relationship	Dr. Nicola “Nic” Forbes & Avery Hall — widowed therapist and rising actress, therapist and client
Core tropes	Forbidden love, age gap, celebrity and civilian, secret relationship, grief, instant chemistry
Setting	Contemporary California — a private therapy practice and the edges of Hollywood
Heat level	5/5 — explicit and plentiful
Series	Standalone in the Blissverse — HEA, no cliffhanger, cameos from earlier books
Content notes	Explicit sexual content, therapist–client boundary violation and power imbalance, death of a spouse and grief, mental trauma, queerphobia, misogyny

How Spicy Is Love Me Like You Shouldn’t?

A full 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and Bliss’s own shop lists nine spicy chapters, the last of them near the very end. Readers who liked it treat the heat as the main event; a couple of readers who didn’t felt the sex was standing in for the relationship, which is a fair description of the same thing from the other side.

The element worth knowing in advance is the power dynamic itself: the sex happens inside a relationship that is, by the book’s own admission, a professional violation, and that frames every scene. One ARC reviewer also notes strap-on content. Beyond that, no reviewer I found flags specific kink. If you want this heat level with an age gap and a less loaded setup, Destination You and At Her Service sit in the same band.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read forbidden romance for the charge of the line itself, you want explicit heat from an author who reliably delivers it, an older widowed heroine appeals to you, and you like a short book you can finish in a sitting.

You may want to skip it if: therapist–client relationships are a hard no, you need the ethics dealt with seriously, you want a slow build rather than instant attraction, or you have started to feel that Bliss’s recent books blur together.

In short: a hot, short, grief-soaked fantasy that works exactly as well as you are willing to not look too hard at its premise.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)

There is no viral moment here and no public argument either. I found no Reddit threads, no trade coverage and no reviews from the big sapphic review blogs; the one blog review I found is a 4/5 ARC write-up that raises the same credibility concerns as the Goodreads crowd. What drives this book is Bliss’s own machine: a direct-to-reader shop launch on January 28, wide release on February 18, a newsletter audience that has followed her through forty-plus books, and a shop page with 120 reviews at 93% five stars. Those are real readers, but they are her readers, on her site, and the independent platforms tell a cooler story — 3.72 on Goodreads, 3.28 on StoryGraph across 159 ratings, and a 4% did-not-finish rate. The audiobook, from her own Ladylit imprint, is narrated by Abby Craden and runs 5 hours 49 minutes.

Prefer audio? Listen to Love Me Like You Shouldn’t on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The heat and the chemistry, first and by a distance — seven Goodreads reviewers and the ARC blog name it. Then the forbidden tension itself, which readers who enjoy the trope describe as exactly what they came for. Nic’s grief draws genuine emotion from a smaller group, who say the book lingered. Craden’s narration has three fans on Goodreads and one detractor. And long-time Bliss readers enjoy spotting Blissverse cameos.

What readers argue about and complain about: The ethics, above everything. At least ten reviewers say the book acknowledges that a therapist sleeping with her client is wrong and then declines to deal with it, and that is the thread running through almost every one- and two-star review. The second theme is the career sacrifice — six readers find it implausible that Nic would end thirty years of practice after a few sessions, and the neat thirty-day handover in the ending doesn’t help. Third: depth. Seven readers call it insta-lust, five say the characters or one side of the dual POV stay thin, and one likens it to an underdeveloped short story. A quieter fourth theme is Bliss fatigue: four readers, several of them long-time fans, say it feels weaker or more familiar than her earlier work. The genuine split is about whether the forbidden premise is the point or the problem, and readers land on both sides with conviction.

The standalone question worth asking first: It stands alone and ends with an HEA; the Blissverse connections are cameos, not required reading. If you liked the widow-and-actress half of this and want it without the therapy office, Nothing Heals Me Like You Do gives you a grieving older lead and an actress eighteen years younger and rates higher on Goodreads at 3.94. For Bliss at her best-rated in this period, About That Kiss sits at 4.07 across nearly 4,800 ratings. We haven’t reviewed either yet.

Frequently Asked Questions

How spicy is Love Me Like You Shouldn’t?

A 5/5. romance.io rates it “explicit and plentiful,” its top band, and Harper Bliss’s shop lists nine spicy chapters. Readers who loved the book name the heat first.

Does the book deal with the therapist–client ethics?

Not in the way many readers wanted. The book acknowledges the relationship is wrong, but at least ten Goodreads reviewers say the consequences are minimized, and it is the main reason for the low ratings.

How big is the age gap?

Nic is 54. Avery’s exact age isn’t given in the blurb or preview, but she is a young, newly famous actress, and at least one reader puts the gap at around twenty years.

Is Love Me Like You Shouldn’t a standalone?

Yes. It sits in Bliss’s Blissverse with cameos from earlier books, but it needs no prior reading and ends with an HEA.

Is there an audiobook?

Yes. Abby Craden narrates the Ladylit Publishing edition, which runs 5 hours 49 minutes. Most readers who mention her narration praise it.

If You Loved Love Me Like You Shouldn’t, Read These Next

romance.io’s similar-titles list, rather than readers, points toward the forbidden workplace power dynamic done at more length: The Headmistress puts a one-night stand in the office of her new boss, and Truth and Measure gives you the boss-and-assistant version with a slower burn — its sequel, Above All Things, is the one romance.io actually names. If it is the age gap at full heat you want, Destination You is J.J. Arias at the same spice level.

For more in this register, browse our age gap lesbian romance guide or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Love Me Like You Shouldn’t sets itself the hardest version of the forbidden romance and only half takes it on. The chemistry is strong, the heat is exactly what Bliss’s readers come for, and Nic’s grief gives the book a real emotional floor. It is also thin on connection, quick to forgive its own premise, and too short to make a career-ending choice feel earned. Whether that trade works depends on whether you want forbidden romance as fantasy or as consequence — but if a hot, grief-tinged afternoon read is what you are after, it delivers. Check Love Me Like You Shouldn’t on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Love Me Like You Shouldn’t ranks as a high-heat indie forbidden romance — charged and quick, with real grief underneath, held back by a premise it won’t fully reckon with, and best approached as fantasy rather than as a serious study of crossing the line.

The Evidence Scorecard

Overall ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

• ✓ 3.72 average across 1,080 Goodreads ratings
• ✓ 3.28 on StoryGraph, 4% did-not-finish
• ✓ Heat and grief carry it
• ✓ Ethics the dominant complaint

Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

• ✓ Therapy-room tension genuinely charged
• ✓ Secret relationship raises the stakes
• ✓ Chemistry praised by seven reviewers
• ✓ Lust outruns connection for many

Characters ★★★☆☆ 3.3/5

• ✓ Nic’s grief gives her depth
• ✓ Avery’s fame pressure feels real
• ✓ Blissverse cameos please fans
• ✓ Only 42% on StoryGraph call development strong

Writing ★★★★☆ 3.6/5

• ✓ Clean, readable Bliss prose
• ✓ 65% of StoryGraph readers say fast-paced
• ✓ Dual first-person used well in sessions
• ✓ Reads short for its premise

Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.5/5

• ✓ Widow waking up is the best thread
• ✓ Several readers say it lingered
• ✓ Guilt present on the page
• ✓ Consequences arrive late and gently

Heat Level ★★★★★ 5/5

• ✓ Explicit and plentiful per romance.io
• ✓ Nine spicy chapters listed
• ✓ Readers name heat as the main draw
• ✓ Every scene framed by a power imbalance

Ending ★★★☆☆ 3.2/5

• ✓ Clear HEA
• ✓ No cliffhanger, fully standalone
• ✓ Nic chooses Avery unambiguously
• ✓ Career exit reads unearned to six readers

Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5

• ✓ Abby Craden audio a quick second pass
• ✓ Short enough to revisit
• ✓ Spicy chapters easy to return to
• ✓ Ethics sour it for rereaders

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