Absolutely enjoyed this entire series. Sonali Dev does a fabulous job creating wholly unique storylines, while weaving in some of our favorite Austen characters’ situations in creative & clever ways. “The Emma Project” is a delightful read!

Even though it took me a while to finish this book, I really enjoyed it!! The beginning was a bit slow, but it definitely paid off in the end.

I haven’t read any Somali Dev books before, but I’ll be reading them in the future! It was a really good slow burn/friends which benefits the storyline. And it’s a retelling of Emma!! I loved how complex The characterization was of all the characters, especially Naina. Her character is always dealing with outside options but remains firm in her strongest convictions.

Overall a wonderful story I’m glad I picked it up!


Thanks so much to NetGalley, Avon, and Harper Voyager for a digital ARC in return for an honest review!

4/5 for The Emma Project by Sonali Dev

This has to be my unexpectedly good book for the month. All the characters are flawed and the mulitple POVS enhance the experience. My only critic is that are the names. They are so similar that I had to write down who was who.

Thank you Net Galley for this advanced copy.

I'm a little torn between 4 and 5 so I'm going with a 4.5 here. This was a nice redemption arc for a previous character and a good growth story for another. I liked the gender swap from the Emma inspiration. Love hearing from the Raje's and watching them grow.

i was legit snickering the whole time! It was funny and cute and my heart was laughing so much from this book! fake relationship to lover edition!

I received an ARC of this ebook by the publisher via Netgalley in an exchange for an honest review.

Wow! The Emma Project is Sonali Dev's 4th book in her series of novels following the siblings of the Raje family. Each novel is a modern retelling of one of Jane Austen's novels. I'd read Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors and Recipe for Persuasion before being granted an ARC of The Emma Project (I have Incense and Sensibility waiting for me on my kindle). And out of the three I've read The Emma Project is my favorite one! This is how modern retellings of classics should be done. Dev uses Emma as a broad framework for her novel. It's not a scene for scene copy, and at times the story branches out. But in the end the two stories share the same heart. Of all of Jane Austen's novels, Emma is probably the hardest to do a retelling of. The difficulty is to make the character reflecting Emma likeable and someone you want to cheer for but still staying true to the fact that they start off as a know-it-all privileged busy-body.

I've noticed that in all of Dev's novels in the series she does any amazing job in creating her characters. They feel like real people, who have flaws, and Dev nails the backstory every single time. And the story is compelling beyond just being a great romance. Dev explores modern issues such as homelessness in the novel with grace and humanity. The Emma Project is the last novel in the Raje series. I wish Dev would add a 5th book recreating Northanger Abbey, but I'm excited that I still have Incense and Sensibility left to read. I'm going to miss the Raje family. It's been a long time since I found myself so invested in a group of characters.

The Emma Project is my favorite book I've read so far in 2022. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

When we last saw Naina Kohli from Incense and Sensibility, she and Yash ended their 10-year fake relationship. In fact, we did not even care for her much. We found her cold, calculating, distant, and her worst crime, ruthlessly ambitious. She went as far as to try and blackmail Vash into continuing with the fake relationship.

In this book, we now have a much clearer understanding as to why she was like that. We see things from Naina’s perspective giving her the arc and transition and how Vash’s younger brother, Vanshna Raje not only sees her for who she really is but loves her strength and dedication. She is not ruthless but passionate and fearless. Through Vansh and Naina’s commitment to helping the homeless in California through an app, we witness Naina peeling off her hard exterior. We also see the growth of the vagabond youngest Raje finally planting a few deeper roots back in Cali. While most see him as a fly-by charity worker traveling all over the place, Naina has always seen the real him and doesn’t make excuses for him. She challenges him and makes him see that he should not push people out of their comfort zone, just because Vansh had to do that for himself. Not everyone is like him. Please note, that this is a modern retelling of Emma and Vansh is in a gender-switched role of Emma.

A bonus surprise is the development of a relationship between India’s brother, Sid and Esha. I did not see that one for a mile. The unexpected encounter and how they grow together is a very sweet and nice build. They do not try to change each other but instead, try to change themselves in hopes to make the other person happier. They are both the most unselfish, understanding, and a caring couple I have truly come across.

I am positively addicted to this series. 5/5 stars!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

While this was definitely the steamiest (so far) of The Rajes series, I was hoping for a little more emotion/chemistry between the characters. I'm all for a gender-swapped version of Jane Austen's EMMA, but there were a few things that didn't translate (update) quite as well as I had hoped they would.

That being said, Sonali's multifaceted characters are what keep me coming back to her books. They're flawed, frustrating, and oh so, endearing! One thing to note, it might be a little difficult to dive into this one if you haven't read the previous three books, simply because there are so many secondary characters. I don't think it makes for a great standalone.

I have not read the series, so I went into this blindly.

This is the second Emma retelling I'm reading, and this one came second. It was good but not high up. The way the Raje family disrespected Naina didn't sit well with me. Too many characters were thrown at me in the first chapter, which blew me off.

But as I kept reading, I discovered that there was a reason for that — it was part of how the family did their thing. Naina is the typical rebel who isn't interested in getting married but focused on funding her initiative for women, but soon finds out that Vansh is threatening to take that all away from her. The only way to keep everything in check — work with your enemy.

This was a good enemies to lovers story, but didn't get me excited as I'd hoped.

Thank you, Avon, for the complimentary arc copy.

This book is entertaining, fun and very sexy. The Rajes are back, and Vansh, the younger son, is called the Little Prince by his family, implying everything comes easy to him. Vansh is handsome and outgoing, but there is a side to him that many don’t realize. Naina and Yash have broken up, after Yash, Vansh’s brother, was elected Governor. Naina is immersed in her project to create healthcare facilities in Nepal, when she finds herself competing for donor money with Vansh. A close friendship begins to evolve into more, as the Raje family makes things even more difficult for the pair. I thought it was really enjoyable and recommend for a light read. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity.

I’ve loved all of Sonali Deva books in this series and this one was another great line. I love retellings and Emma is one of my favorite Jane Austen books so I really loved this one. It was really fun and I loved that it was set in a different culture.

I was given a signed copy by Sonali Dev so will be posting my review to IG with that and the other books in the series. Thanks again for the ARC.

“Don’t you see, what you’re talking about is an Emma Project. It’s vanity. It’s looking for ways to play with people’s lives out of ennui.”

The fourth and final book in the Rajes series about a big loving, complicated family in California, stars Vansh, affectionately nicknamed Baby Prince because he is the youngest Raje and manages to use his charm and dimples to get his way and Naina, Vansh's older brother Yash's (Incense and Sensibility) ex-girlfriend. Naina was an only child and grew-up in a household where her father's coldness and rigid ways had her and her mother on edge. Childhood friends, Naina and Yash came up with an arrangement where they were in a relationship but there was nothing romantic about it. Yash got to seem settled to help his political career and Naina got her father and mother off her back about getting married. When Yash falls in love, the arrangement blows up in Naina's face when Yash's family blames her for thinking she kept him in a loveless relationship for ten years and her mother and father blame her for Yash leaving. Vansh always liked Naina and even with their twelve year age difference he remembers Naina being one of the only ones to help him with his studies when he was struggling because of his dyslexia. Vansh hates seeing her frozen out of his family's circle and the more he steps in to defend her, the more he realizes that his attraction to her is more than friends.

The more uptight she got, the goofier it made Vansh want to be. It made him want to make a complete ass of himself, if that would get her to crack a smile.

If you're a frequent reader of Dev and the Rajes series, you'll know that one of the best things about Dev's writing and stories are her family dynamics. I usually find her works to be romance adjacent, there's a strong romance plot but family contemporary fiction threads are right along beside the romance and typically bind everything together. I went into this ready to be emotionally wrung out and though there were a few times I got hit, Naina and her mother's relationship had some hurt moments (“I don’t understand you children,” her mother said about her thirty-eight-year-old daughter who had never had a chance to be a child, and had spent her entire adult life trying to change the lives of women in the remotest, most neglected parts of the world. “I know.” Those words landed on her mother like a blow and Naina kicked herself. Casual indifference was the only way to not end up saying something hurtful to her mother. Hurting her mother was like kicking a puppy.) the inclusion of one too many plots gave the story such a jumbled feel that I could never sit in the emotional spaces.

He could not lose their friendship.

You'll want to read at least the first, to get some idea on Raje family dynamics/story/history or previous book in the series as this starts off right where that one ended. Dev has all the Raje siblings and cousins with their partners meet up on a roof top right away that, to me, felt like it would have fit much better at the ending. It was a little character overwhelming but I could have rolled with it if the story then would have settled on Vansh and Naina together. Instead we get more of them separately dealing with their individual issues but forced to work together because of an awkwardly fit in sort of villainous billionaire. He has a foundation that has already agreed to give Naina money for clinics overseas but wants the attachment of fame of working with a Raje, he thought he had that because of Naina dating Yash but remember they are now broken up, and so he brings Vansh in and makes Naina work with him on his project or she'll lose the money for her clinics. Vansh gets the idea to try and solve/help with the homelessness issue in San Francisco when he comes uppn Hari, his brother Yash's campaign analytics guy and discovers he's homeless. I'm sorry but the whole Hari's homelessness and his anxiety that Vansh tries to help/cure him of because of his own issues with dyslexia and rest of his family is brilliant, along with the awkward villainous billionaire felt really plot messy. Then there was a small sub-plot of criminals trying to stop Naina's clinics from being built and, dang, I just felt myself yearning for some love and sex between Naina and Vansh.

“Don’t you see? Happiness is a lie.”
“Don’t you see? Happiness is the only truth there is.”

Naina and Vansh do spend a good amount of time together, it was just there were so many threads pulling them away from their romance plot. Around 40% Naina gets drunk and she has a little hump session on Vansh's thigh, 70% I felt like the romance was finally properly focused on and they decide, mostly Naina's doing, that they're going to sneak around and sleep together. Because of the relationship Naina grew-up seeing between her mother and father (her father was mentally and physically abusive to her mother), Naina doesn't think she is worthy of love or that it really exists. Around mid-eighty percent Vansh starts to get angry with having to hide his relationship with Naina and there's some Raje family drama with seeing Naina in a different light and Naina having a little bit of reckoning/understanding with her mummy. These separate emotional reckonings were needed by the characters but the majority of the book was dedicated to the explaining and build-up of these issues, instead of the build-up of the romance. Leaving the last 30% to deal with the romance wasn't enough for me.

He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. “Naina.” He said her name. That was it.

Along with the other plots in the book I mentioned, there was also a little bit of secondary romance. Readers of the series will know Esha as Vansh's cousin who was the only survivor of a plane crash that killed her parents when she was a child and left her with some kind of sixth sense that gives her seizures which tell her the future. I loved this character and was looking forward to her getting her own story and was a little disappointed that her HEA was jammed into Vansh's. There felt like some paranormal-ish element from her sixth sense that didn't fit the tone of this and her romance with Sid (Yash's love India's brother) came off rushed because this wasn't their book; they also stole the epilogue which made me mad on Naina and Vansh's behalf. So, yeah, plots, threads, and structure wise, this felt like a mess to me and even though I got hints of Dev's brilliant family dynamics, I missed her emotional impacts and was disappointed in the lack of time dedicated to the romance of Naina and Vansh.

I have read other Sonali Dev novels and The Emma Project was just as delightful as the others. It was refreshing to take a character I did not like in the previous novel and give her more nuance and depth. Naina grew on me and Vansh was great, if a bit naive! A fun read with a great heroine!

I really enjoyed The Emma Project, although I hadn't read any of the previous books by Sonali Dev. The characters were very well flushed out and interesting. I can't say they were very relatable since they all had a lot of money and tremendous emotional angst but the family story itself was really interesting. It's also hard to relate to a father having such a strong emotional hold on his wife and daughter but it was fiction, after all.

I wish Dev had taken time to explain more of the E. Indian phrases/words and customs mentioned in the book because they were all mentioned with the correct name but if you didn't already know what they were, you were at sea. The food is another example. I wish there had been more explanation of what they were eating, as opposed to just how enjoyable it was. If you want a book to be a crossover success you have to cater a little to your non-native readers, I think.

Read it for yourself and get lost in the spider web of family that is intertwined in Naina and Vansh's lives.

The Raje Family Series Finale: Sexy and Satisfying

In a fitting conclusion to her Jane Austen-inspired quartet about The Raje Family, Sonali Dev offers the steamiest entry of the series with her gender-reversing The Emma Project. It overflows with fight, love, humor, and pathos as characters rage, simmer, ignite, and succeed.

Dumped by long-time boyfriend and new California governor, Yash (Crown Prince of the Raje Family), for the serene India Dashwood (Incense and Sensibility), Naina wants nothing to do with any of the Rajes ever again.
Wounded, she focuses solely on her work: purchase land in Nepal, build clinics, train local women to be midwives, and hire doctors who specialize in prenatal and postnatal care. She’s riding high as the recipient of a massive endowment from the rags-to-riches poster boy, philanthropist Jiggy Mehta.

But her high crashes hard when the young, footloose Baby Prince, Vansh Raje, shows up. Rather than attending college, Vansh opted to join the Peace Corps, and now he’s returned home. GQ handsome and barely twenty-six years old, he’s already turning heads—including Jiggy Mehta’s.

Jiggy decides Naina must share her funding with a project of Vansh’s creation—he likes the Raje name. Naina is outraged. Now her $15 million endowment is in jeopardy, which means seven hundred thousand lives in Nepal are as well. She takes it out on Vansh, taunting him because certainly none of his “do-gooder projects” were anywhere near the scale of what she’s doing.

The easygoing Vansh, however, believes they can work together on both projects. After all, the two always stuck together as kids because they were their families’ outliers despite the 12-year difference in ages.

Instead, Naina likens Vansh to Austen’s Emma.

“Emma,” she explains, “is an overindulged, albeit well-meaning, brat, who is looking for matchmaking projects so she can feel good about herself while filling all that empty time she has on her overprivileged hands.” She crisply dubs his idea to assist the Bay Area’s homeless an “Emma Project.”

The friction between the long-time friends eventually turns into a sweaty, breath-stealing, sexually-satisfying friction—until the next day, when Naina realizes what the two have done. Slowly, however, Naina warms to the idea that sex with Baby Prince is rather pleasing. The more the two join forces out of the office, the more their involvement spills into each other’s projects, setting the stage for a series of stunning and memorable conclusions.

Dev’s writing buzzes with emotion and hums with her characters’ determination. Her attention extends to everyone in the Raje Family world, but Dev is particularly compassionate with the fraught relationship between Naina and her mother. Chandni’s English isn’t as “polished” as her contemporaries. She sits on Naina’s last nerve, shows up without warning, and criticizes Naina’s apartment, clothing, and lifestyle.

Dev writes, “If her mother had taught Naina anything, she’d taught her how to show up in uncomfortable situations. Every day.” Naina accepts her mother’s nosy meddling because deep down she senses her mother’s gains and losses with her marriage.

Alongside the Naina-Vansh storyline is that of his oldest cousin, the ethereal Esha. When award-winning wildlife photographer Sid Dashwood appears, it is apparent their meeting had been authored in the stars. Sadly, their story was secondary; it may have been an interesting fifth book in the series.

Social issues are integral parts of this series. Through Naina, Dev highlights efforts to give low-income women sustainable lives through microloans, healthcare, and work. Vansh’s project illuminates the need to lift the homeless who have skills to return to society and the workforce. Environmental and conservation issues are front of mind with Siddartha “Sid” Dashwood, India’s brother.

Naina and Vansh are the most interesting of the characters featured in the series because Dev dives into the deep end of the story’s sex appeal. The fun of The Emma Project is an age-gap slow inferno between the headstrong, take-charge Naina and the younger, peacemaker Vansh. Naina’s transformation from ice queen to lover is like caterpillar to butterfly, and philanthropy has never been so sexy.

Honestly this book was just embarrassing. I've never read any of Sonali Dev's books and after this one I don' think I'll ever read another. Why are desi authors so intent on normalizing Israel?? Absolutely not. Also, the last ten chapters was just back and forth angst that dragged on for way too long.

I have tried to read this book a few times, and even tried on audio, but it is just not for me. I have had such a hard time keeping up with the characters and what was happening. We were introduced to SO MANY characters in the first chapter and I cannot for the life of me keep track. When I thought I should have taken notes, I realized this was a DNF for me.

@sonali.dev beautifully completed the Raje family series with The Emma Project. While the whole series is inspired by Jane Austen’s works they are sweet novels of a family as each Raje discovers love and strength in who they are within a well respected and admired immigrant lineage. This story focuses on both Vance Raje the “baby prince” and weaves in a story of cousin/essentially sister Esha stepping out of their expected roles. Thanks @netgalley for the ARC!

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫/5

The Emma Project by Sonali Dev is a HOT retelling of Emma by Jane Austen. A part of the Raje family universe, this book focuses on Vansh Raje and the Naina Kohli. As they navigate the high-stakes world of philanthropic giving in the Bay Area they also cannot deny their attraction. With family expectations and projects looming, the two cannot stay away from each other. Can they admit that there is more to their feelings than just their physical attraction or will these two remain enemies with benefits?