The E.M.M.A. Effect
A Novel
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Riley again mashes up a Jane Austen plot with professional hockey drama in her enticing second Regals Hockey romance (following Puck and Prejudice). After computer scientist Harriet Smythe's boyfriend dumps her via text, she throws herself into her job at TrainTech, creating the Empirical Machine for Maximizing Athletics, a precision AI tool to help coaches "make more informed training decisions." When her boss realizes that she has a personal relationship with Austin Regals hockey forward Gale Knight—her best friend's younger brother and Harriet's longtime crush—he insists that Harriet recruit him as a beta tester for the technology. Gale also harbors a crush on Harriet, and his performance on the ice has been "career-threatening bad" lately, so he agrees. The experiment gets off to a bumpy start when the meddling AI asks a touchy question about Gale's estranged father, and as he and Harriet attempt to work out the bugs, Harriet is shocked by her own creation's conclusion: that she and Gale belong together. The nods to Austen's Emma add to the fun as submissive-leaning Gale and dominant-leaning Harriet dance around their chemistry. Riley peppers the tale with spicy scenes and handles heavy emotions with empathy. Sports romance fans will devour this well-crafted contemporary.