The E.M.M.A. Effect

A Novel

By: Lia Riley

Narrated by: Alexander Cendese, Brittany Pressley, Samantha Summers

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, Harriet 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.

Loose Contemporary Emma Retelling

This loose retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma finds an AI system (E.M.M.A.), created to track and enhance sports performance, going rogue and self-evolving, adding matchmaking skills to its wheelhouse. It concludes that pairing its creator, Harriet, with her hockey player test subject—and best friend’s brother—Gale, will positively impact his mental and emotional health and reduce the issues he’s been having on the ice.

I’m always a fan of seeing novels represent women in STEM and enjoy seeing characters who’ve had longtime crushes on each other finally get together.

There are some great moments where we see Harriet with Gale in this one, but between being concerned about how a relationship between herself and her test subject would impact the perception of her AI project and how it would impact her friendship with his sister, Harriet throws multiple roadblocks into the course of their potential relationship. As opposed to the original source material, E.M.M.A. is trying to match the truly compatible individuals here, and Harriet is the one directing the AI to override its recommendation for peak performance to offer other individuals for Gale to date.

While Harriet’s qualms are understandable, her corresponding behavior does get a bit tedious.

Never fear, though, because Harriet and Gale do eventually get their HEA.

This is the second book in the Regals Hockey series but can be read as a standalone. (The first book is the time travel romance Puck and Prejudice.)

3.5 stars

If you're an audiobook fan and are debating between ear-and eye-reading this one, it's worth the listen to hear Brittany Pressley as E.M.M.A.