Noah and Jenna share a birthday.
Back in college, they made the cliche marriage pact: if they weren’t married by thirty-three, they’d marry each other.
Yes, it’s a romance cliche, but it is a fun cliche. It wasn’t overdone–both characters remembered the pact and how they’d like something to come of it, but it wasn’t the centre of the story. Instead, it was the setup for an excellent friends-to-more story (which just happens to be my absolute favourite romance trope).
As the story starts, Noah and Jenna are both thirty-two and still single, and have maintained a strong friendship over the years. In fact, architect Jenna is currently renovating the six-bedroom historic home Noah has recently purchased.
As suggested by the title, The Billionaire’s Backup is a billionaire romance.
This is a trope I have a love/loathe relationship with. I like the fact the characters don’t have money troubles (well, the billionaire doesn’t), because it can get a little depressing reading novels where the lack of money is a central plot point. I don’t like billionaires who are rude or arrogant, or who have made their billions through exploiting others (e.g. underpaying the people who work for them). One of the reasons I enjoy Elizabeth Maddrey’s billionaire series is that her billionaires are all regular guys, a group of close-knit friends who hit big on the stock market, but who haven’t let money change them.
Of course, having money does mean they can do things most of us can only dream of.
Money might not buy happiness, but it sure buys some fun stuff … and I enjoyed seeing Noah splash some of that billionaire cash when it came to impressing Jenna.
The story also had a more serious point to make about being a Christian: the importance of community. It challenged me to rethink how I do Christian community, as that’s definitely something that has changed in my life since the pandemic.
Overall, The Billionaire’s Backup is a fun contemporary Christian romance that will appeal to fans of marriage pact, friends-to-more and billionaire romances … especially those looking for a Christian faith thread. Recommended.
Now I’m looking forward to the next in the series, The Billionaire’s Teacher!
About Elizabeth Maddrey
Elizabeth Maddrey is a semi-reformed computer geek and homeschooling mother of two who loves a good happily ever after.
She began writing stories as soon as she could form the letters properly and has never looked back. Though her practical nature and love of computers, math, and organization steered her into computer science at Wheaton College, she always had one or more stories in progress to occupy her free time. This continued through a Master’s program in Software Engineering, several years in the computer industry, teaching programming at the college level, and a Ph.D. in Computer Technology in Education. When she isn’t writing, Elizabeth is a voracious consumer of books and has mastered the art of reading while undertaking just about any other activity.
She lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. with her husband and their two incredibly active little boys.
Find Elizabeth Maddrey online at:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
About The Billionaire’s Backup
Not besties or anything. Just the kind of friend you hit up when you want to go to a party but don’t want the pressure of a date.
She’s fun. Independent. And she gets me.
Which is probably why we dated for a while – more for fun than anything..
The kiss was completely out of left field. And so was the ridiculous pact to get married if we were still single in our thirties.
Neither of us have ever mentioned that pact again.
But man, a lot of years have passed and I can sometimes still feel her lips on mine. Now that she’s going to be renovating my house, it could definitely be a problem.
The whole pact thing might have been dumb, but would it really be such a bad idea for us to get together?
