A Groom of One's Own by Emma St. Clair: Book Review

  *Book received for consideration. All thoughts are my own.

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.

And 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 romcom 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 & Absolutely Not in Love from the Sweater Weather series, but all books can be read as standalones.

Emma St. Clair is a USA Today Bestselling Author who loves sassy heroines, witty banter, and love stories with heart and humor. Her books have sizzling chemistry while keeping the bedroom door closed. She has an MFA in Fiction and lives in Katy, Texas (go, Tigers!) with her hubby, five children, and Great Dane. Her favorite place to write is tapping on her phone while on the elliptical machine. No Emmas have been hurt in the writing of these novels. (Yet.)

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A Groom of One's Own is the first book in the new Appies hockey romance series but is a spinoff of Just Don't Fall & Absolutely Not in Love from the Sweater Weather series. While I definitely recommend those books (they're amazing!), you can definitely enjoy this one as a standalone as well. 

I fell in love with the Appies in Sweater Weather, so I was really looking forward to this series. When I learned the first book was going to take on marriage of convenience!? Even better! Hockey and marriage of convenience are two of my favorite tropes, so my expectations were very high. Thankfully, this one absolutely did not disappoint!  I feel like a bit of a broken record saying each new Emma St. Clair book is my new favorite... and yet, here we are. Again. This book was absolutely fantastic! Eli was such a wonderful, outgoing character and so hard not to enjoy. He balanced out Bailey's shyness and they really had the very best chemistry together. I couldn't get enough of them. 

As much as I love Eli and Bailey though, the side characters absolutely made the story as well. I loved seeing more from the Appies teammates, of course... but I also loved getting to know Eli's family. His mom's meddling and his sister's lack of boundaries had me laughing out loud! As someone who deals with chronic illness and pain, I really appreciated that representation in Eli's mom as well. 

A Groom of One's Own is a closed-door romance. It did seem like it had just a hint more sizzle than we typically see from Emma St. Clair, but just barely and no spice. I have found that tends to be more typical in marriage of convenience stories anyway, because--- well, they're married. There is one scene that would probably technically be considered fade-to-back but felt more like implied intimacy to me. There's no doubt what happened off the pages and there was some slight buildup, but it felt pretty tame. And again, they are married at the time. There was also a handful of very minor language (Four uses of H-E-double hockey sticks--- that's it.)

Get your copy: https://amzn.to/4bXvnUZ