Emma is my favorite Jane Austen novel, I am a big fan of modern retellings of stories/old novels, and Clueless is one of my favorite movies. All of this is to say: I would not have needed much to enjoy this book, and still didn’t.

I don’t know if the problem is the writer’s lack of ability in translating the characters in a modern and queer context, or if the story simply doesn’t work with a male protagonist, but as it stands it feels like someone tried to recreate Emma without understanding why the story and, perhaps more importantly, the characters in it work in the first place.

The main problem with the cast of characters (although not the only one) is the protagonist: Emmett. For a story like Emma to work, the writer has to hit the right spot, making the protagonist a careful combination of naïve and judgmental, but in this Rosen misses the mark, by a lot, and Emmett ends up being kind of an asshole. I do not expect retellings as such to keep everything the same, but Emma is this sheltered person who has not experienced much of the world, which is why she ignores Mr. Elton’s may red flags. Here, Emmett does the same not because he is sheltered (he isn’t) but 
because he has many of the same red flags himself. This is just one example of why Emma/Emmett’s character was butchered.
Harrison, too, was a poor adaptation of Harriet’s, as he no longer is inexperienced, and randomly becomes of a bumbling idiot instead.

That being said, I still cried.