Very fun read! I am really enjoying this series and I’m hoping there are more. I have not read Jane Austen’s Emma, but I feel like I have to now.

This book felt like a warm hug and a mug of a lovely tea on a cold night. I was so entranced with the story and the characters that I could not put it down! I am a fan of the Rajes but this book felt like next level awesomeness. The main romance between Naina and Vansh was that perfect blend of age-gab, forbidden romance, that sweeps you off your feet and keeps that fire burning. They were opposites attracts meets made for each other at the same time. I loved their quick wit and banter and how they kept each other on their toes. I loved how the romance developed and how they had to basically deconstruct years of preconceived notions in order to make their romance work. This story was so layered with family drama on both sides, patriarchal nonsense, and sexy smiles that I think I'll read it again very soon. It was also so sweet and lovely, the storyline between Naina and her mom got me in my feels as well as Esha and Sid's story. Honestly there is just so much to love here this book is a perfect bookend to the series and I cannot wait to see what Sonali Dev writes next. I am in awe of her ability to weave so much into one book and still have a fast paced, fun, coherent, and beautiful story. This is one I'd love to see made into a Netflix movie!

This is a hard one to review. I loved the series from the beginning but the last 2 have fell of the mark for me. I didn’t feel the chemistry between Naina and Vansh. It felt forced to me. Individually the characters were fine, but I didn’t buy the romance.

Vansh Raje has always led a charmed life. Handsome—Vogue has declared him California’s hottest single—and rich enough to spend all his time on missions to make the world a better place. Add to that a doting family and a contagiously sunny disposition and Vansh has made it halfway through his twenties without ever facing anything to throw him off his admittedly spectacular game. Knightlina (Naina) Kohli has just gotten out of a ten-year-long fake relationship with Vansh’s brother. She is sick and tired of the meddling Raje family and would be happy to never have to see or deal with them again. All she wants is to bring economic independence to millions of women in South Asia through her microfinance foundation and prove her father wrong about, well, everything. Just when Naina’s dream is about to come to fruition, Vansh Raje shows up with his misguided Emma Project... And suddenly she’s fighting him for funding and wondering if a friends-with-benefits arrangement that’s as toe-curlingly hot as it is fun is worth risking her life’s work for.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this series and was sad to discover this is the final book in the series. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as the previous ones, just because I really didn't care for Naina (she was always mad about something it seemed like, and very abrasive and therefore unlikeable), and Vansh just felt one-dimensional. I really didn't feel the heat of their relationship, like I have of the relationships in the previous books. I did, however, enjoy the blossoming secret relationship between Esha and Sid. The book did make some really good points about homelessness, and the way society treats those who have lost their homes. Overall, it was a good book - not great, but good. If you have read the others in the series, you will definitely want to read this one. If you haven't read the others, I definitely suggest reading those. You don't have to read them in order but each book focuses on a different couple in the Raje family, and if you like rom-coms, then you will enjoy this series.

The Emma Project by Sonali Dev is the 4th and I believe final book in the The Rajes series. Author Sonali Dev has a way with each book in this series making you feel like you are a member of this family. As the reader, we have gotten to know the Rajes and have invested in their lives. I love this book and look forward to more reads from Sonali Dev in the future!

I really like the Raje family, but this and the previous book just felt a little over done and slow to me. I adored the Esha and Sid story threaded through this book. I loved Vansh. I know Naina was meant to be a little grumpy (per Knightly) but she was very difficult to like. I loved their passion for their own projects and how they came to work together, but it just felt overall a little heavy to me.

THE EMMA PROJECT - @SONALI DEV
4⭐
PLOT -
Vansh Raje,26, the youngest handsome charming and rich enough to spend all his time on missions to make the world a better place.
Naina(Knightlina) ,38, just got out of decade long fake relationship with Vanshs oldest brother , wants nothing to do with Raje family andnbring economic independence bro woman in South Asia.
But now for her dreams to materialize Naina jas to fight with Vansh to get the full funding to fulfill her dream.

MY THOUGHTS
I enjoyed this Emma retelling esp with Vansh portraying the character.
I loved that this book tackles real life problems like Dyslexia (where u can achieve so much without formal education) and homelessness.
Sonalis storytelling skills , character development are very good and I breezed through this one.
I wish Eshas story was more developed esp the latter half.
Do check this out of you enjoy age gap romance, friends to lovers, meddling family with their never ending drama.
Thank you Netgalley and Avon for this review copy in exchange for my honest review.

This has been a very hard one for me to get through, honestly. The writing is great and the characters are funny, but for me I don't feel the chemistry between Vansh and Naina. There are pieces of Naina's story as well that I found to be very moving but also very hard to read and handle. Sonali Dev writes beautifully but this one just wasn't for me.

I definitely had a hard time liking the heroine of this book but with that said I don't think you necessarily need to love the characters to enjoy their story. I did love the diversity and uniqueness of the story as well as the hilarious side characters and meddling family members. Sonali definitely has a way with words that many authors can't match.

I love a Jane Austen update and this one about Emma is really fun.

Everyone thinks Vansh, who is the youngest Raje, is flighty and unfocused. After all, his siblings are all ultra-successful in their careers and in love. Vansh' passion is community work. He's traveled around the world in Peace Corp and doing other socially minded projects. Naina has similar interests and has secured funding for her new project of health care for women in South Asia. Naina and Vansh team up professionally due to constraints that have been put on her funding. But Vansh has only ever known Naina as his older brother's (fake) girlfriend. Can they overcome their age difference, their families, and their career interests to be together?

I liked this one, although it was a bit spicy for my taste. I liked both the main characters and how well we got to know them and how they acted and reacted in relation to each other and their families. Emma is not my favorite Austen book, but this is a fun and entertaining update and a lovely ending to Dev's series.

Thank you to Netgalley for this hotly anticipated book for review.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book.

I absolutely loved this final (for now anyway) book in Sonali Dev's Raje family series! Emma is my favorite of Austen's novels, and so I automatically felt ready for this one. I thought Dev did a wonderful job adapting the story, keeping just a few elements, but making the story her own, as well. I especially liked seeing the gender switch of the main characters (something she has done in the series before). My only complaint is with the few chapters we get from Esha's POV. I know her story is meant to be the Jane Fairfax/Frank Churchill part of the story, but the way her POV is told is so jarringly different in tone from the rest of the book, that I felt myself falling out of the story during these chapters. I did like how everything came together eventually, though.

Overall, this was an excellent end to a wonderful series. I will miss the Raje family, but hopefully we will have more great books coming from this author.

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

The final Raje book has not one but two love stories! The oldest and the youngest of the family find love but will it last?

Naina is cruising through life without her fake boyfriend/fiancé Yash, who now resides in Sacramento as the governor of the great state of California. Then her jackass funder decides to recruit Yash’s younger bro, Vansh, to share the money that had funded Naina’s project. Then she has to work with Vansh and he turns out to not be a playboy like she thought.

I’ve read every novel in this series and the final two were the best. Politics, non-profit do-gooderism…sign me up. I’m fairly certain I have not cried reading any of the others, but Naina and her cruel dad and crushed mother had my face wet.

Tw: domestic abuse, sadistic fathers

I really like this series of companion novels and how it focuses on a different character each time. I honestly had a great time reading this especially how it was a sort of friends to lovers romance.

The Emma Project is the 4th book of The Rajes series, and with each book I feel like I get closer to this close-knit extended family. In the previous book,
Naina had just ended a fake 10-year relationship with Yash Raje, who has just been elected governor of California. But now, the youngest Raje, Vansh, who is 12 years younger than her, has her feelings she has rejected for most of her life. Naina and Vansh are also business rivals, so there are many complications between these two. Both Naina and Vansh have many other emotions to work through, too, in this multilayered story. There is a side story in this book that really moved me. Esha has been living in isolation on the family estate, when her life takes a very unexpected turn.

The Emma Project follows Naina Kholi, who is handling the world knowing about her relationship with her bestfriend, Yash, of ten years. Vansh recently got elected as the governor of California and Naina just recieved funding for her foundation, here comes the catch. In order for her to be able to use this money she was to work together with Yash’s younger brother, Vansh, and he wants to show that this project could be a good thing for the world and show Naina what he is capable of being more than his family.

I was very confused by what or who was supposed to be who from Jane Austen’s book as in the description says it is, and the start is so confusing and it just wasn’t my cup of tea the way everything was excecuted. To me nothing made sense, the romance part of the story just didn’t feel romantic and most of what was happening was in regard of the project took away from whatever the actual plot was. A positive takeway, the writing was okay, just not the plot and execution.

The Emma Project is very well written, and the story is compelling and thoughtful. However, it is NOT an Emma retelling. It’s really a stretch in that capacity. If it was titled something else, I would never make the connection. I feel like I’m grasping to justify the comparisons. I do enjoy a roll reversal, in that our heroine is actually a hero, Vansh, and our “Knightly” is heroine, Naina. But the nuances that make Emma so charming and beloved are absent. I hate that abuse was inserted into the storyline. And the general mean spirit of the families involved. The quirky flippancy of the family dynamics is one of the best undercurrents in Emma. It was squashed here. I struggled to push through and kept telling myself that more connections would be made, but sadly no. I think I would have enjoyed the story more if I wasn’t hoping to draw connections to my favorite Jane Austen story, and I do appreciate the importance of what Sonali Dev was expressing through her characters. It just wasn’t for me.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Emma. But when I saw that The Emma Project is a gender bent Emma, I was intrigued. Connected to the other Rajes stories, The Emma Project deals with expectations and (mis)conceptions. It's about having to confront some truths about ourselves and figuring out if we are motivated to look closer. While I think it's best if read with the others in the series, you can definitely read without (even though this book seems to have a close connection to the previous one especially).

Dual POV, The Emma Project allows us to see the accusations and miscommunications. How someone can sometimes see so clearly the pieces of ourselves we hide. But also how they can be distracted by their impressions of us. It took me a bit of time to get into Naina and Vansh as main characters. And Dev does not shy away from flawed, complex, or characters who make mistakes.

I am so sad that this is the final book in the Raje family series! Sonali Dev is a masterful romance author. In The Emma Project, we got a closer look at Naina, who we had met previously as Yash's career-focused former (fake) fiance. The earlier perception of this character in the preceding books was important to the set up; while you can definitely read The Emma Project as a standalone, the payoff in really getting to know Naina and understanding how past perceptions were wrong about her was a big selling point for me.

Men in my life have told me that I'm intimidating, that my success can be off-putting, and so I definitely related to Naina's focus on her career. As a woman in tech, I also related to her frustration with the male characters she had to work with. Dev does an excellent job capturing the frustration of the buddy-buddy relationships between men that can feel so exclusionary to women.

Dev really shines when capturing family dynamics, and the contrast here is interesting - Vansh's difficulties as the baby of the Raje family, so tight-knit and seemingly perfect, compared to Naina's family, with an abusive father and her strained relationship with her mother. Watching how both Vansh and Naina navigate these dynamics and work to improve their family relationships while also learning to trust each other was a real highlight of the book for me.

Finally, I'm so glad Esha got her own storyline! She's another character who has been present in the outskirts of the earlier novels, and I was hoping she'd get featured before the series comes to a close. No spoilers, but it was a very satisfying ending for her!

This is my first book in the series and I enjoyed it so much! The Emma Project is loosely based on Jane Austen's "Emma". The best thing about this is that it hardly borrows elements from Emma unlike other inspired work. Sonali Dev did a great job exploring family dynamics and as for someone who is Asian American, I loved how brutally honest she was.

My favorite Raje family story to date! I really enjoy this retelling of Emma and how it explores intent vs. consequences of characters' actions. Open-door romance and steamy chemistry so be aware.