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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.
Source: NetGalley; advance copy provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review
I am declaring this fourth installment in The Rajes series as my favorite! Why? Because Vansh and Naina make excellent adversaries-turned-something-more in The Emma Project.
Yes, Vansh has a magnetic personality that attracts people but he also makes them feel safe and heard. When you look past the Raje family legacy and the looks, there is an authentic soul in that body. He's someone who's strived to prove himself beyond the Raje name to find his life's purpose. Naina is not quite charismatic nor does she care to be. At the moment she's still dealing with the fallout from the revelation of her fake relationship with Yash. The press feels sorry for her, the Raje family are all but giving her the cold shoulder thinking that it was she who manipulated Yash all these years. None of those problems compare to what is currently her biggest problem which is working with a finicky benefactor who revels in power trips. Naina's had to deal with difficult men all her life, her father being the worst of all. She has a strained relationship with her parents, especially her father who's disappointed he never had a son, and who is only ever worried about his status in the community. He's essentially a bully to her and her mother, and her mother has never fought back. Now she's facing another man who wishes the pull the strings as far as her life's work is concerned. The last thing Naina wants to do is allow even an inch of space for Vansh to step in and take away her access to funding. But when it looks like there's no other option, she grudgingly agrees to work with Vansh to share the funding and hopefully out-maneuver their patron.
Out of all the Rajes novels, I consider The Emma Project to be most like a rom-com and it's definitely due to Vansh's personality and Naina's often biting retorts to his attempts at charming his way through things. He's irresistible and is quick with the one-liners as well. I think I enjoyed this best of all because their chemistry ignites from the word "go", which made me realize that it's been a while since I've felt that kind of spark in the characters I've read recently. This is friends-to-lovers or better yet, frenemies-to-lovers with Naina obviously viewing Vansh as her competition in acquiring the financing she needs for her project.
Romance aside, there's also a good amount of time spent on how women are viewed and how Naina's had to overcome both her father's disappointment in not having a son, and his ambitious desire to have his daughter married off to a family that can elevate his standing, and specifically his ego. She has grown up in a household where women are torn down and stripped of their own desires. She saw the maltreatment her mother silently accepted. Naina has refused to be that kind of person. She wants to be a stronger woman who doesn't need a man at her side because a man would only demand she give up what she loves. But her father has also demonstrated how men behave and she's learned her lesson well, using that to work around her oftentimes misogynistic benefactor.
It was an absolute joy to read The Emma Project and I'm still smiling about it. Sonali Dev gives you heart and soul in her storytelling and it's been a privilege getting to know The Rajes. I'm glad this series is ending on such a high note!
~ Bel
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