Jane Austen meets Ali Hazelwood in this steamy, friends-to-lovers, STEM rom-com! He’s her best friend’s little brother and NHL forward. She’s a computer scientist used to being in control. The E.M.M.A., her elite AI training program, claims optimizing his performance requires one thing: the perfect match. According to its calculations, that’s her… Will Harriet discover that The E.M.M.A. knows best?
Harriet Smythe’s AI was supposed to create sports legends—not encourage her crush on her best friend’s totally off-limits, hot younger brother. But when funding runs dry, she has no choice but to enlist Gale Knight as her test subject. The same Gale she’s been secretly crushing on for years. The player who follows her every instruction with a knowing smirk that threatens to short-circuit her carefully maintained system.
Everything changes when The E.M.M.A. determines that finding Gale’s perfect match is essential to his peak performance. Even worse? According to its data, that match is Harriet.
Determined to keep things professional, she makes it search for new candidates. But as Gale dutifully endures awkward outings with pop stars and athletes, the chemistry between them only intensifies. And his willing cooperation during their sessions definitely isn’t helping her stay focused.
With her deadline approaching and The E.M.M.A. still playing cupid, Harriet must choose: trust in pure logic, or admit that sometimes taking control means letting go.
Maybe The E.M.M.A. knows something they don’t—even if they’re not ready to compute it yet.
Harriet Smythe’s AI was supposed to create sports legends—not encourage her crush on her best friend’s totally off-limits, hot younger brother. But when funding runs dry, she has no choice but to enlist Gale Knight as her test subject. The same Gale she’s been secretly crushing on for years. The player who follows her every instruction with a knowing smirk that threatens to short-circuit her carefully maintained system.
Everything changes when The E.M.M.A. determines that finding Gale’s perfect match is essential to his peak performance. Even worse? According to its data, that match is Harriet.
Determined to keep things professional, she makes it search for new candidates. But as Gale dutifully endures awkward outings with pop stars and athletes, the chemistry between them only intensifies. And his willing cooperation during their sessions definitely isn’t helping her stay focused.
With her deadline approaching and The E.M.M.A. still playing cupid, Harriet must choose: trust in pure logic, or admit that sometimes taking control means letting go.
Maybe The E.M.M.A. knows something they don’t—even if they’re not ready to compute it yet.
Title: The E.M.M.A. Effect
Author: Lia Riley
Publisher:
Expected Publication Date: December 2, 2025
Review:
Thank you Avon Harper Voyager and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this title to read and give my honest review. The opinions expressed here are my own.
I will admit, the concept of this book drew me in immediately. I love STEM and especially women in STEM. And with the AI in our world becoming some prominent in so much of our lives, I was excited to see how it was used in this book. Plus it's a Jane Austen inspired story and likened to Ali Hazelwood. So I had to give it a try. I actually did not realize this book was connected to Puck and Prejudice. While you see some characters from that book, this one could definitely be read as a stand alone. Riley has been hit or miss with me in the books I've read from her. Since I enjoyed the first book in this series, I figured I'd give this one a try.
Harriet Smythe has created E.M.M.A., an AI program to help athletes the best they can be. When Harriet employs her best friend's baby brother, Gale Knight, to be one of her test subjects, she's expecting it to boost his waning career. She's not expecting the AI to evolve into a program that evolves to include more personal things in its assessment, like how it decides the best way to get Gale's game back in line is to pair him with Harriet.
From the start I enjoyed Harriet's character. She was fun and just a bit on the quirky side with how intelligent she was. Of course she's been attracted to Gale for as long as she can remember. But she never thought it was a good idea to act on it since he's her best friend's brother. She never imagined he'd be her perfect match. Of course Gale has always been in love with Harriet but he never thought she'd have those same feelings for him. So it was fun to watch them realize they wanted to be with each other.
I was really into this story until about half way through the book. Then it just started to have some plot holes I could not get over. LIke the fact that E.M.M.A. needed Gale to wear a device so she could track him but she easily sussed out Harriet's moods without her having any device. It didn't make sense. And the chemistry between the characters started to feel off. I understood there was some miscommunication between them but it didn't seem to make sense to me. I hated that Harriet was keeping secrets from Gale. And I wasn't a huge fan of how the plot centered around a relationship being able to fix everyone's problems.
Finally, the submissive/dominant relationship between the characters didn't seem real. It seemed forced into the story to try and make it more interesting to the reader. Another plot line that didn't seem as organic as it could have. And I am in no way against reading this type of spice, but it just didn't work with the characters in this story. Had there been a bit more background, maybe some flashbacks to show these characters traits, I would have found them more believable.
While I enjoyed this one enough, I felt like it was too forced towards the end. I needed the characters to grow organically and it just didn't happen.
Overall it was fun and if you enjoy women in STEM, best friend's brother, friends to lovers, and a little kink exploration, give this one a try!
Author:
Lia Riley is a contemporary romance author. USA Today describes her as "refreshing" and RT Book Reviews calls her books "sizzling and heartfelt." She loves the beach, fresh flowers, foggy redwood forests and a perfect pour over coffee. She is 25% sarcastic, 54% optimistic, and 122% bad at math (good thing she writes happy endings for a living). She and her family live mostly in Northern California.
Visit her at www.liariley.com to learn more.
Visit her at www.liariley.com to learn more.
No comments:
Post a Comment