A Groom of One's Own

An Appies Hockey Romance

By: Emma St. Clair

Narrated by: Emily Ellet, Rock Engle

He always dreamed of getting married—but for love, not to avoid deportation.

Eli Hopkins has it all—almost. A hockey career with the wildly popular Appies. Teammates who are like brothers. The only thing he's missing is someone to share it all with. Oh, and correctly filed visa paperwork.

Due to administrative error, Eli is about to lose everything. Unless he can find someone to marry him in the next thirty days. He might have the perfect woman in mind. The only problem? He'd like to marry her for real, not simply for legal purposes.

Now, Eli faces the challenge of winning over a wife who thinks the marriage is in name only...

A Groom of One's Own is a closed-door marriage of convenience hockey rom-com with heart and humor, sizzle but no spice. Perfect for fans of sports romance who want a little less heat.

This book connects to Just Don't Fall and Absolutely Not in Love from the Sweater Weather series, but all books can be listened to as standalones.

©2024 Emma St. Clair (P)2024 Podium Audio

I Loved This Marriage of Convenience Story!

A Groom of One’s Own is a wonderful addition to the Appies series! I listened to the audio book, which was narrated so nicely. The characters of Eli and Bailey came to life beautifully!

Eli has shown up in the two previous novels and definitely had a fun and engaging, extroverted personality. However, there were hints that there was more to him than met the eye, including a head for investing.

This was such a sweet marriage of convenience story between two people who I just couldn’t help but love. They were little more than acquaintances when Eli mentioned the idea of marriage. They both admire what they know of each other, yet are still very much strangers to each other when they actually agree to get married.

One of the things that felt very real about this story was when occasionally Eli would make a decision and then realize that it was the opposite of what Bailey had needed him to do. Such as when he showed up for their date and Bailey thought he was going to give her a hug and he didn’t. I loved that he immediately realized her disappointment and wrapped her up in that hug. These two were growing in their admiration and attraction to each other in a gentle way all through the story and it felt so real, as did the various “awkward together” moments.

I loved the care and consideration they showed for each other and their romantic attraction was simply perfection! This story made me so happy to listen to and is definitely going on my list of favorite marriage of convenience tales.

A win for introverted extroverts!

Fun story, i enjoyed Emily’s reading but Rock often had the wrong inflections that didn’t match what the characters were saying.
The storyline is the classic- they fall for each other but don’t communicate their feelings until the end. I usually don’t care for those types of stories, but the author kept me engaged and interested with fun and unexpected plot details and the character’s personalities.
One thing I didn’t like was I felt that Eli’s personality changed from the way he’s described in the first two books.

Loveee!!

Enjoyed the dual narration with this dual pov story.
Really loved the characters, banter, and plot!
Marriage of convenience is one of my fav tropes and this one took the cake! Especially as a closed door romance!

A refreshing hockey romance story with laughs

I normally have some cringe, fast-forward areas in the majority of modern romance stories. This does not need to be said about this book.
I totally loved this book for the fact the author wrote humour, tension, jealousy, hot kisses, and what true genuine love looks like, without getting extremely explicit.
I can recommend this story to any friend who likes a sports romance book.

Great book but male voice needed work.

This was a great book. The male voice did not fit the character. He play the character way too old for this type of story. Already bought the next book in the series but it is not the same author so we will see.

Amazing

Emma has another bestseller! These characters will have you cheering for them from the first chapter!

Feel good romance

The only thing I had a hard time with was the pacing of the male voice performer. It felt like he had not read the book before he started reading it out loud. Lots of times they were pauses where there shouldn’t be pauses or tone that didn’t match the words or story. For a while, I thought maybe it was AI. But the second half of the book sounded better. The female performer did fine.

A sweet story of reversed roles and dog lovers

He’s always wanted to get married. She’s always wanted a family. Can they both find what they need in the other?
The story is humorous as the characters dance around what they want, before they even realise what that is. The narrators deliver just the right level of emotion for these enthusiastic characters to shine. I thoroughly enjoyed the slow road to realisation and Eli’s shy but fully genuine enthusiasm, Bailey’s determination to carry on after her world fell apart, and I especially loved Eli’s Mum’s over the top joy of living her fullest life - and then there’s her book club!