Sadly, this did not work for me. I think a big issue was I’ve not read any of the other three books in the series so I came with no background other than what is given in the book. As the book starts oldest of the Raje siblings has just been elected governor of California. His ex-fiancé for the last ten years Naina, who was in a fake relationship with him and then publicly humiliated and dropped is moving on with her life and her philanthropic foundation. She is counting on the money commitment from Jiggy a tech billionaire. She has been working on her plan for to improve health and jobs opportunity for women for a decade. Vansh is the youngest of the Raje siblings. Having dyslexia he never went to college like his brilliant siblings. Instead he went into the Peace Corps and has worked on various projects around the world.

After one conversation with Jiggy Vansh manages to put Naina’s funding at risk by suggesting he has a plan to help with homelessness in San Francisco. Jiggy then pits them against each other which forces them to work together to keep the funding. That is a big simplification of a lot of the story. I like Naina but her father is a misogynist and the general chauvinism by other men is a lot. Vansh himself is a manchild, who causes a lot of the problems and then wants credit for trying to fix the mess he’s created. I’ll buy that his intentions are good but he’s the kind of guy who expects someone to make his sandwiches because that will help other person feel useful.

I’ve read another reimagined Emma set in a southern Indian culture that was light and fun. This isn’t that. These people can be mean and manipulative. By the end I was buying into the relationship between Naina and Vansh until he again manipulates her and outs her to his family when that was the opposite of what she wants. His sisters have been horrendous to her and there is a one line apology to him saying tell her we're sorry, when she is not in the room. No. Not good enough. And there is no comeuppance for her father who has emotionally abused her and physically and emotionally abused her mother. Also you never get the satisfaction of seeing Naina tell off the villain Jiggy, with his money manipulations, because the scene fades out. If I want me to empathize with Naina give me a moment to cheer for her.

If it weren’t for the title and names from Emma being mentioned in the book itself I wouldn’t have recognized this as an Emma reimagined. I liked the idea of Vansh being the Emma character and Naina being Knightly. And the reverse age-gap, she’s 38, he’s 26 was fine. But the story was meaner and darker then I wanted. There is language and intimacy is fade to black. Thank you to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Emma Project by Sonali Dev is a cute gender-swapped Emma adaptation, though it loosely uses it's base text. Though I hadn't read the previous books in the series, I loved the big Indian-American family at the heart of it, the Raje's. I felt for Naina, the Knightley of the story, and the way she had been treated, and loved that there was an enemies-to-lovers aspect of her romance with Vansh. The subplots were A+, and I overall loved this. Can't wait to read more of the Raje's soon.

I love retellings of classics and The Emma Project seemed to fit in that category. Naina is a driven women who is trying to recover from the ending of her ten year fake relationship to one of the prominent Raje men and try to secure funding for her clinics in Nepal. When circumstances demands her to work with the youngest Raje brother their relationship starts to became more then Naina is looking for.
While the story line was well done I found it to drag at times and very loosely based on the Jane Austin classic that if I didn’t know that was it was supposed to be I may have missed that reference.
Thank you to the publishers for allowing me to read this advanced copy.

I utterly adore this series and am always impatient in the wait between books. Sonali Dev does a masterful job adapting Jane Austen's works without sacrificing the plot of her own story. It feels bittersweet to reach the end of this series.

Vansh is the youngest of the Raje siblings and has always felt a bit of an outsider. With both the age difference and dyslexia, he has felt that he is not taken as seriously or understood. Family friend, Naina, has always supported him, but her relationship with the Raje family is now quite strained after her separation from the oldest son, Yash.

I really enjoyed the two of them together and the exploration of the age gap romance I was also pleased to see more of Esha in this book. I have hoped to learn more about her throughout the series.

One aspect that especially stood out to me in my reading of this book is Sonali Dev's amazing use of metaphors. I don't know why I was more aware of it here than in the previous books in the series, but her metaphors are hilarious and unique and do such an amazing job of description.

And finally, I need to say a huge thank you for the way in which homelessness in San Francisco was addressed. Too frequently, I see it mentioned with stereotypes or even derision in novels. In The Emma Project unhoused people were described with dignity and respect, and their humanity was acknowledged. I don't know how well the ideas for tackling housing affordability would actually work, either in San Francisco or in Portland where I live. But it was a joy to see such thoughtful discussion.

Thank you to Avon and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. These opinions are my own.

CW: domestic abuse, anxiety and panic attack

4.5 stars rounded up

This was a somewhat uneven end to the Raje series, that really stretched the Emma retelling for me. A gender bent version of the story, Naina is twelve years older than Vansh, they have been part of each other’s lives forever, and neither of them have ever been seen clearly by the other people in their lives. When Vansh gets included in the funding Naina secured from a hotshot billionaire philanthropist, they have to spend a lot of time together, and start a friends with benefits arrangement. They have an undeniable connection, and I enjoyed all their scenes together. This was much steamier than the previous books in the series but was what I call ‘dutch door’ we get part of an explicit sex scene, and then the door gets shut in our faces. It happened over and over and I found it frustrating to be excluded from so much relationship building our characters were doing together.

Sonali does gut wrenching family dynamics so well, and Naina’s family is messed up. She has a lot of emotional damage to try to heal, and it really gets in the way of her believing she is worthy of love, or wants it in her life. Little ray of sunshine Vansh gives it to her anyway, even when she asks him to stop. He thinks he knows best, and is frustratingly naive a lot of the time.

I wish the book had explored more of the philanthropy it touches on. As someone who works in nonprofits, I see how difficult it is to secure appropriate funding, and an even more critical view of the kind of immoral wealth hoarding that allows the super rich to ‘decide’ what causes they want to support. That
probably would have been uncomfortable for the Raje’s coming from the wealth they have, but I think it would have made a compelling and important point. Instead, the structural reasons poverty exist worldwide are largely unexamined, and our main characters are applauded for their philanthropy when they make few moves for real structural change.

I did enjoy the story, and I actually loved the insertion of Esha and Sid’s romance, though that epilogue was way of our left field. I just find myself unsatisfied in a way I wasn’t after any of the previous books in the series.

"Emma gets a fresh Indian-American twist from award-winning author Sonali Dev in her heartwarmingly irresistible Jane Austen inspired rom com series.

No one can call Vansh Raje’s life anything but charmed. 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.

A couple years from turning forty, Knightlina (Naina) Kohli has just gotten out of a ten-year-long fake relationship with Vansh’s brother and wants only one thing from her life…fine, two things. One, to have nothing to do with the unfairly blessed Raje family ever again. Two, 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."

If there's one Austen open to reinterpretations I view it is Emma. And if there's one author great at reinterpretations that is Sonali Dev.

A diverse retelling of Jane Austen's Emma. Innovative and creative, age gap romance with endearing characters and well developed subplots. An emotive novel that's well written and evenly paced.

As the youngest member of the Raje family, Vansh has always found his own road through life, traveling the world with various philanthropic projects. He finds himself back in his family home after helping his older brother become Governor and decides to focus his efforts on "solving" the homeless problem in San Francisco. Because of his connection to his brother, Vansh is sought out by a funder who is interested in providing funding for his project. The catch is that it's the same funder who is funding Naina's (his brother's former fake fiancee) foundation to support women's medical care in Nepal. Vansh and Naina quickly realize that his funding will come out of her funds that have already been earmarked. As the two are forced to work together, they come

Things I loved about this book: Age gap where the woman is older than the man, the secondary storyline about Esha, representation of a person experiencing homelessness and mental health issues (Hari), Naina in general was a great character.

Unfortunately I think this is probably my least favorite of this series. I think I'm probably a bit biased here because Emma is by far my least favorite Jane Austen book and character. I did NOT like Vansh at all and in particular how he treated Hari was just so uncomfortable for me. I also had a real problem with Naina's mother's characterization throughout the book. Unless I am vastly wrong about something, Naina's father was physically abusive to her mother on at least one occasion in her childhood (the incident with the basketball team). And of course he's certainly also emotionally and verbally abusive. The physically abusive incident is never really discussed and the resolution of all of this is one sentence in the epilogue that says that her mother moved out of the house. Her father never has to take any sort of responsibility for his actions and isn't held accountable.

I also think Esha's story could have been it's own novella at the very least. I found myself really wanting to know more about her besides the couple of chapters we got.

Overall, I still really like this series but I don't think I'll come back to this one again.

If you hadn’t guessed from the title this is an Emma retelling and one thing you should know about me is that Emma is my least favorite Jane Austen novel and I LOVED this book.

First, it’s gender flipped meaning that Emma is the handsome Vansh (and boy is he handsome) or as I call him in my heart Baby Prince. He is hotter than I care to explain and a lot of it has to do with his dimples. I’m a simple woman, the MC has dimples and I’m instantly in love with them, those are the rules. All kidding aside, Vansh is incredibly deep and complex and such a treat to read. He’s also obscenely hot and he knows it and I, for one, dig that.

Mr. Knightly is a woman in this one and oh, was Naina a treat to read about. She’s strong and yet deeply vulnerable in a balance that is hard to strike. Dev does this balance so much justice and her character arc is probably my favorite from the book. I could write love poems about her character arc and the strength that love requires. I won’t, but I could.

The supporting characters are also incredibly fleshed-out and the subplots are incredibly well-done. This book is part of a series, but it can absolutely be read as a stand-alone. I did just that and I didn’t really feel confused or like I was missing out on something, though I now have the urge to read the whole series.

Also, the romance was there and it was steamy all right, yet tasteful, which was much appreciated. Vansh and Naina had such a beautiful and deep connection and I was rooting for them the whole way through the book and when the big gesture did come, I was a little teary-eyed and grinning so big it hurt.

Thank you @netgalley and @avonbooks for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was probably my least favorite of the books in this series. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that bad either. I didn’t feel like either of the main characters really had that much character development. Yes, they grew and all that, but it felt very rushed. It may have just been that I was reading the book extremely fast, though. The Emma Project had a nice, fast pace to it that I really enjoyed. However, I kept pushing the book off because it just felt very lacking. The ending, which was supposed to be this happily ever after, felt the same way. It didn’t really resolve my concerns and left me with a lot of questions. There were way too many loose ends that needed solving. Also, I wish the book was a little closer to Emma. All of the books in this series usually end up being a little far out of the original Austen story, but I wish this just was a little bit similar. Other than that, I really enjoyed it. 3/5 stats!!

I’m on a bit of a book high right now and sad to see that this is the last story of the Rajes (which just tells me I need to go back and read some of the others I’ve missed). Writing in reverse order, let me say that concluding The Emma Project I am 100% on board with this being made into a screenplay. It would be amazing. But let’s back up.

Sonali Dev has taken a Jane Austen favorite, Emma and gender swapped the role of Emma with the youngest Raje, Vansh. Spoiled, indulged, smoking hot, and adorably dimpled, Vansh is the smartest choice Dev could have made for casting”Emma”. Known to be a bit of a country hopper, righting the world’s injustices and making friends along the way, Vansh seems an unlikely candidate for following through on planning to curb the plight of homelessness in San Francisco. The catch? Vansh will receive funding for his project, but at the expense of causing his older brother’s (fake) ex, Naina, to lose some of her ear-marked funding for thousands of women’s clinics in Nepal. The evil and ridiculously rich “Jiggy” is behind the ploy to pit Vansh and Naina against one another.

Naina seems to be opposite Vansh initially; fighting the patriarchy, working her tail off for her nonprofit, and super serious. As the two are forced to work together, they begin to realize that although they might not see eye to eye on their work, their chemistry can not be denied.

Things that worked so well for this book we’re the aforementioned gender swapping for Emma and also the age gap with *GASP* a 38 year old woman and a 26 year old man. I want to high-five Ms. Dev for taking on the older woman concept and normalizing it not only for her characters but also for the traditional Hindi community. Vansh’s dyslexia. I love to read about a hero with flaws and adored seeing how hard Vansh worked to overcome his dyslexia; speech-to-text writing, memorizing his PowerPoints, using his people skills to match strengths to coworkers.

The writing is superb and the theme of capacity (to love, to change oneself, to feel worthy, to stand up to an abuser, to do great things) is strongly used in The Emma Project. Telepathy is also threaded through as a form of connection and communication and does not seem wishy-washy at all; characters pick up on how one another are feeling or what is being thought by reading a face. Touch is important to the story as comfort, never as hurtful and the body serves as a teacher for healing and mending characters. To add to that, the sexy scenes are so natural and unbelievably hot and the characters might not even be undressed! (Two thumbs up for the THIGH and restaurant scenes which will live rent free in my head).

One thing that initially threw me was Chapter 6 which seemed to come from out of left field with a side story about Esha. I was so confused at first, that I had to go back and re-read to make sure I hadn’t missed something. BUT—and this is the mark of a great writer—this side story slowly and seamlessly works it’s way into Naina and Vansh’s storyline. Just trust—it will come together. I still would have liked to see an earlier transition from one set of characters to another, but by the end of the book I was so happy to have has this side romance. Which has brought me full circle: when you get to the end of The Emma Project you will have fully fallen in love with the Rajes, Naina, and her mother. And Vansh—what a fantastic hero—adorably annoying at first, but oh so lovable. Thank you to NetGalley, Avon, and Harper Collins Publishers for my ARC in exchange for an honest review. This review is of my own opinions and is unbiased.

My heart breaks a little bit knowing this is the last of the Raje stories (although I'm secretly hoping for a holiday novella!). As a huge Jane Austen fan, I'm always on the hunt for retellings. Sonali Dev's Indian interpretations of the Austen novels have been fantastic. The stories are unique, fresh, and fun with so much heart and depth packed into each one. They are not an exact Austen retelling, but rather books inspired by the stories, and I just love them all!

So The Emma Project was my most anticipated of the novels. Emma by Jane Austen was the first Austen book I read and is the reason I fell in love with them all. Dev's book was just so fantastic. I laughed and cried multiple times and I just enjoyed every moment of this story. I loved that Dev opted to reverse the MC roles from the original novel, making the male MC (Vansh) our Emma in this story. It was perfectly executed! And kudos to Dev for not being scared to tackle the somewhat taboo storyline of the female MC being older than the male (in this case, 12 years older).

One of the best parts of this being the last of the Raje novels is that we've met both MCs in the previous books and already have somewhat of an idea of who they are. Although, not going to lie, I was not expecting to love Naina nearly as much as I did! Her character arc was beautiful and so vulnerable. I just adored the way Vansh was so in tuned to her emotions. It was a sweet love story.

Thank you, Sonali Dev, for making such beautifully inspired Austen-inspired novels. The Emma Project was delightful, full of fun, and so, so romantic- just like the original Emma! I loved it so much! (PS- I'm also thrilled we learned more about Esha's story! That was an excellent addition!)

Also, thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review!

Unfortunately, this one just did not work for me. I was excited for this as I generally enjoy Emma retellings and while I have not had consistent feelings on the rest of this series, I have generally enjoyed my time with it overall. But unfortunately this series just wraps up with a whimper for me.

I'll start with the retelling aspect. This is a gender swapped retelling with Naina being our Knightley character and Vansh being the Emma character. This didn't quite hit the buttons I felt like I expected it to being an Emma retelling, but as I have never actually read Emma take that with a grain of salt for sure.

Beyond the retelling element I spent most of this book annoyed at someone or something and that is just not the feelings I want to be the main one I feel when reading a romance. The whole Raje family was just very nasty towards Naina. And I understood it initially given the events of the previous book in this series, but it just dragged on for so much of the book and Naina never really got a proper apology or anything. And then with the real "villain" of the series, Jiggy, who was the money behind Naina's big project and when the time came in the book for Naina to be able to tell him off that scene got faded to black!! I had been waiting all book for it and all I got was one sentence saying she did it.

As far as our main characters go, they definitely had good sexual chemistry. But I was missing their romance. They started off at odds with each other because of the bad situation they got put in at work coupled with some poor preconceived notions about each other and it never really felt like we saw them soften towards each other over time. They held these infuriating grudges well into the second half of the book and then all of a sudden they were in love at the end. It was wholly unconvincing.

Dev also shoehorned in a side romance that felt very unnecessary and kind of jarring given how little time was allotted to it. We got maybe 3 chapters of it that were spread so far apart I'd forget about it and then all of a sudden they would pop back up. And it was a side character from the previous books that I had never been interested in so that certainly didn't help. It felt like she had already decided to end the series at this book but also really liked this couple so just popped them in to get it on page.

Overall, definitely a lackluster way to end this series. I enjoyed early installments enough that I would still give this author another read the next time she releases a book though and file this one away as the exception not the rule.

I wanted to love this, but I just...didn't. I've loved Sonali Dev's previous Jane Austen re-tellings and Emma is one of my favorite of Austen's works but something didn't click with me here. It's probably more of a timing issue, and I'll gladly try reading it again in the future!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Avon/Harper Voyager for the ARC of this novel. I have been such a huge fan of Dev's work since I stumbled upon the first of The Rajes series and this was a perfect ending. The history that was laid out in the previous novels all plays into the ending here AND we get a focus on Esha that I was not expecting; It was so sweet and funny and gut wrenching all at the same time. It forced me to stay up way too late to finish it and see how it would all work itself out. If you have not read this series before, go straight to Pride and Prejudice and Others Flavors right now and then read them all. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I went into this book with so many expectations because I have loved the first three books in the series. I was not disappointed as somehow Sonali Dev managers to make each book in the series my favorite. After the last book I so wanted to see what Naina’s storywould be especially since the impression you get of her in the last book is not the most favorable. Right away I was excited because her hero is Vansh which means this is an reverse age gap story.

Naina wants to separate herself from the Rajes for her own self preservation at this point. Unfortunately for her as she is trying to get her micro finance foundation off the ground she runs into Vansh who has his own miss guided and my project.

It’s really fun to see how the relationship progresses especially since it seems to be Wass who is pursuing her more. Of course his family is not pleased once they find out because they are still angry with her about the fake relationship with Yash. I will admit to being a bit annoyed with more of the anger towards her rather than towards both her and Yash since they both participated in the fake relationship.

All in all this is another emotional gut wrenching story written by the fabulous Sonali death. Somehow she manages to write stories which twist your heart and yet put it back together again by the end of the story. You’ll never feel disappointed at the end of these love stories. Although you will most likely have a book hangover because it’s really hard to move onto a book after you have read anything written by Sonali Dev. I have always loved Jane Austen stories and these four books were done spectacularly and had the tone of Jane Austen but we’re written in the fabulous Sonali Dev style.

We're in the final installment of The Rajes y'all! (Though I didn't read the first 2, so I'm blessed with the opportunity to go back to the beginning.)

I'm a little more familiar with Emma, which made this retelling even more enjoyable. I could be mistaken, but I think this one is genderbent! If not, her being named Knightlina is pure coincidence. I loved Naina and Vansh together, whether they be fighting homelessness or each other. I was also pleasantly surprised by the steam level - you get everything *but* the big event, but I didn't feel cheated at all. It was so interesting peering into the world of philanthropy with a start-up culture take. I also loved that we got to learn more about Esha! I did get annoyed with how the Rajes started treating Naina after the break-up with Yash, especially since Yash was complicit in the fake dating scheme... but it all works out in the end.

*Thank you to Avon and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review*

This was, sadly, a DNF for me. I just couldn't buy into the romance - it felt contrived and I didn't connect with the characters.

So first of all, I’m super upset at any of my friends who have been reading this series and didn’t let me know how fantastic it was. When I started reading the arc for The Emma Project, I didn’t realize it was part of a series, I was just super excited for a gender-flipped Indian retelling of the classic. This book definitely works as a stand alone, but after going back and reading Incense and Sensibility I am a little bummed I didn’t have more of Naina’s back story first. The good news is that I still have two other books in this series to look forward to!

I loved the character development in this story, both for Vansh and Naina. I don’t always feel like both characters in romance novels are equally interesting, but I really liked both of them and feel like I want to be their real life friends. In case it wasn’t obvious, I highly recommend this book and I’m currently enjoying reading the rest of the books in the series!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book almost caused a reading slump. I wasn't enjoying it and kept setting it aside and then just didn't have the energy to read anything else. I gave this book 1 star for a lot of reasons. First, there was no real character development for Naina or Vansh. Other characters who have appeared in this series don't always act in ways that we would expect them to in this one. Next, the plot was thin as heck and trying to act as if this book is a pastiche of Emma was a stretch. Like a lot. There was no comeuppance for a really terrible character in this one and kinda sorta one for another. Then, Dev force fits two romances into this one and it doesn't work. I get why she did the last on the latter book since she was modeling it off of two sisters from Sense and Sensibility. But her deciding to shoehorn in Sid and Esha was a bad call. I get she wanted to end the Rajes series with this one, but maybe their story could have been a short story or something. The epilogue left me cold honestly. The last book in this series definitely went out with a whimper. 

"The Emma Project" follows Naina Kohli who we got to meet in the last book, Incense and Sensibility. Naina is still dealing with the world finding out her 10 year relationship with her best friend Yash. Yash is now the newly elected governor of California and Naina is focused on the funding she has received from a billionaire that will help her foundation. However, things take a turn when her financier refused to give her the money unless it's on a project with Yash's younger brother, Vansh. Vansh wants to use the project to do something good in the world and to also show Naina he is more than just his family or face.

So. Naina is supposed to be the Knightley in this book. Vansh is Emma. Somehow worse than her though which is saying something. Vansh is determined to use this project to "cure homelessness" and is fixated on a former employee of his brother's who he is going to "make over." Yes, that is as offensive as you think it is. What kills me is that Naina keeps warning Vansh and he ignores her and the book portrays Naina as closed and unmoved by love, instead of having more common sense than a flea. Also what really drives me up the wall is that Vansh does not learn any type of lesson. He gets excused by everyone and their mother (literally) in this one and it just made me fling my hands up. 

I think this is supposed to be an enemies to lovers trope, but it doesn't really work. It also doesn't help that I felt the romance was real. It just didn't make any sense and I really wanted there to be more development of that. Instead too much of the story was taken up by the "project". And Naina's backstory is a lot. And it could have been it's own book. There's a lot of pain there and you get insight into her, her mother, her aunt and once again it just didn't fit with everything else going on. 

And the Rajes kind of sucked in this one. I think Dev had an uphill battle making Naina a sympathetic character that readers would want to root for after the last book and the things she got up to. But you can understand her a bit better in this one. But the whole family treating her like persona non grata made zero sense after you saw how she pretty much grew up with that whole family. And we know how she protected Yash. Frankly I was disappointed with Yash in this one. I guess he was too busy fixing racism in this book with his sitting down with the police union and Black Lives Matter (yes my eyes rolled the entire way around) to actually stand up for Naina. Since we got to know him in the last book, it was so weird he would be absent and not taking his family to task for how things were going down. We did get to keep hearing how awesome India was and how she was like a serene Buddha every five seconds though. 

And the biggest what the heck was including Sid (India's brother) and Esha into this. I don't even know what that was. I was never a big fan of that whole character anyway (Esha) but it just felt like filler to me and not good filler. I just kept muttering why is she in this? 

The writing was fine, the plot was not. I just thought the entire book was misguided mess. The flow was not great either. Nothing hung together and it felt like we were just running from scene to scene and then love scene to love scene with no real effort to ensure that the story made any sense and the main couple was one to root for. Sid and Esha were probably a good reason why the flow in this one wasn't that great. 

The ending of the book "wraps" up things for everyone though. It does end on a Happily Ever After. I was just disappointed because there were too many loose threads left with Naina's storyline in my opinion.