The Emma Project by Sonali Dev: After the end of her ten year fake relationship with her best friend Yash, 
Naina Kholi is now all about building her brand and helping empower the women of South Asia. With a billionaire sponsor onboard all Naina needs to do is focus on growing her plans that is until her financier hits her with a massive road block one that Naina definitely did not see coming. If she wants the financial backing then she has to partner with non other than Yash’s younger brother Vansh. The only problem being that Naina wants absolutely nothing to do with the Raje family, to bad Vansh is determined to prove that he is so much more than a pretty face that comes from an affluent family. Things are about to get interesting and fast when Vansh and Naina find that they share more than just Yash in common, soon each of their encounters beings to get pretty steamy leaving both of them wondering if there could be more to their partnership…
I have been really enjoying the Raje’s series this far, the fact that Dev always keeps things so real and authentic is definitely one of the reasons which keeps bringing me back to this series, also I really like her play on the classics. It’s going to be difficult to say goodbye to this series after all the laughs we have had with each member of the Raje family.
I will be honest I wasn’t entirely sure if I would actually like either of our leading character this time round, after getting to see glimpses of both of them in previous books I was a bit nervous that Vansh would be this annoying entitled player and well to be completely fair I was just not sure that I would be able to like Naina after her entire fake relationship thing with Yash. However I am happy to say that Dev put all of these worries to bed and I found both Vansh and Naina really interest characters on their own. I will say that I really liked the gender reversal in this book with Vansh being the Emma character and Naina being the Knightly character, this was one of the elements of this book that really stood out for me.
I really liked getting to know Niana’s character more in this book and to be fair I really don’t think she was done justice in the previous books. This time round we get to see why she is so jaded and that after having such an abusive and unhealthy relationship with her father she has been reluctant to open up to others. I will say that I admired her desire and passion to help the women of Nepal. Her entire project had such good bones and intentions which made it really hard for me to like Vansh when he puts a spoke in the wheel of her funding, nevertheless I will say everything worked out in the end.
For the most part I found that Vansh came across as a vapid shallow character that was more concerned with his looks and a large majority of his descriptions were of his physical and him being just the perfect man looks wise, this got a bit to much after the first few mentions. I will say that there were a few parallels between Vansh and Emma in that they are both well meaning in their meddling and poking into other peoples business. To be fair I found Vansh a bit irritating especially when he made it his mission to ‘help’ the homeless guy find a home and then made it his mission to help all the homeless in town, this was just came across as a bit fake to me. If anything for all his well meaning intentions he kind of made a mess of things.
Over all The Emma Project made for a good read, there were a few laughs, some steam, not too much drama and a good ending for this entire series.
Book Info:
Publication: May 17, 2022 | Avon Books | The Rajes #4
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.
