Oof. This was good but didn’t hit like I think it could have. But man, Margo is resilient. I guess I’m not the demographic that would appeal to this kind of character. The talk of OF and abortion is too much for me and it was too casual.

Stop here. If you haven’t read this yet, don’t read the review just go for it right now.

I was not expecting the emotional rollercoaster that this book would take me on.

When Margo gets pregnant while in college, everyone important in her life encourages her to not move forward. But Margo chose to keep her child and raise Bodhi on her own. Margo has a complicated relationship with both parents (as most people do). When Shyanne (Margo’s mother) disagrees with her choices she lets her know. When Jinx (Margo’s dad) disagrees with her choices and gets angry and then wholeheartedly supports her through it anyway.

When Margo joins OnlyFans to make money to support her and Bodhi, her life goes on a wild journey with complications and challenges at every corner.

I loved the character development for Margo as a person and in her relationships as she finds her way through motherhood and beyond.

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You will like this book if you like: laugh-out-loud writing, chaotic family dynamics, books that play with person, thinking about the business and ethics of OF 🍼👽

BOOK: Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe

🚨CW: giving birth to your professor’s baby, CPS, vomiting

I thought this book was going to be funny. It was not in any way. It was sad and maddening and demoralizing. Margo certainly has money trouble, but she has way more ethical troubles, starting with sleeping with her married college professor and getting knocked up. Yes, he pursued her and was in the power position, but how in this day in age can one be so dumb? Dumb to let it happen and dumb to have not used effective birth control. I appreciated that Margo took responsibility for her own role and wanted to be a good person in raising her baby. I appreciated her struggles with trying to work and find/pay for childcare as a single mom and can only imagine the utter exhaustion and frustration. But, plenty of single women manage it via work ethic, hustle, creativity, and good decision making. I felt that Margo was looking for the easy way out of her financial difficulties through her singular pursuit of sex work and social media influencing. That she was well-rewarded for her efforts is demoralizing to the millions of women working their entry level jobs, selling Pampered Chef or Pure Romance or Avon, putting themselves through school to get a better career, and managing to raise a kid or two. Through poor planning, Margo loses her waitressing job, doesn't have a back-up plan, and never honestly attempts to get gainful traditional employment or go back to school once she had her OnlyFans gig established. This left me not particularly liking Margo as a character.

Of note, the book flips back and for between first person and third person every few pages. I didn't get how that added to the story (it got just a few paragraphs in Margo's classroom reflection, but I failed to see how it related), and I personally found it annoying. This book was well on its way to a 2-star review until the last 35 pages. Here, we see Margo developing some maturity and starting to make better choices and think about a long-term plan. Perhaps there is hope for her after all.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

While enrolled at her local community college, 20-year-old Margo has a brief affair with her English professor and ends up pregnant. She decides to keep the baby but soon finds herself unemployed as working and finding childcare is not so easy. Desperate for money, Margo decides to start an OnlyFans account and becomes quite successful at it. But sometimes success comes with a price.

I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did! I absolutely loved Margo! She had so much thrown at her, but she tried to navigate life the best that she could, and I was constantly rooting for her! There were so many heartwarming moments, and so many times I laughed out loud! I was a little sad when this one ended!

I listened to the audiobook after seeing that Elle Fanning narrated it. She did such a great job! Then I found out that this book is going to be a series on Apple TV, and Elle will be playing Margo! I'll definitely be watching!

Oh my where to begin! I absolutely loved this book from start to finish. With a crazy and unique synopsis that reels you in, the surprisingly heart-warming, intelligent, and humorous content is what keeps you hooked. A compelling story that explores interesting modern themes and dilemmas with morally grey characters that you can’t help but fall in love with. Margo, while annoyingly naive, is a complex young woman and a protagonist worth rooting for. I loved how the book made me reevaluate the social constructs in place and societies stigmas regarding professional sex work, I’ll never shut up about this book!!

Margos also got a whole lot of gumption. What a great and unique story that explores the means of OnlyFans as a means of income. Margo’s family and friends are delightfully built characters that make you settle down and just devour this book! Her dad is easily my favorite character. If you are looking for something different, with a slight edge but also a soft gooey center…this is your book 👍

I previously loved Rufi Thorpe’s book The Knockout Queen so this was a highly anticipated 2024 read for me.

This is such a unique & relevant story. Wrestling and OnlyFans make for an interesting combination and I loved how they connected. The writing style is quirky and funny without being juvenile (like in a YA kind of way). My favorite character was Jinx – Margo’s ex-wrestler dad. We stan dads who support their child no matter what!

This book is about people who are just trying their best to live life in this hellscape and we can all learn something from that. We are so quick to judge without really knowing what’s really going on in someone’s life. There are important topics raised like single motherhood, poverty, and treatment of sex workers. This book is slated to become a TV series and I think it will work incredibly well in that format.

Here are the “cons” if you can call them that: the book switches back and forth between first and third person, which may bother some readers. It’s a strange choice but I guess it was supposed to relate back to conversations with the English professor? I didn’t 100% get that part. Also the ending was a bit abrupt imo, but it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of the book at all.

I had a fantastic time reading this book! It really makes you question what you would do if you were in the FMC place. I love the depth that the author brought to the characters and the character development was great.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the eGalley!

Unique, surprising, and real sums this coming of age story up perfectly. This book also probably has the best opening paragraph to a book I have ever read, so I was immediately interested. Margo, a 19 year college student, finds herself pregnant by her older, married professor after a brief relationship. She decides to have the baby, and the book evolves to Margo’s life from there. Her story is anything but typical! Her life isn’t perfect, but the author somehow presents Margo’s life in a funny but real way as she deals with her problems. Her basically estranged, ex-wrestling dad ends up being her roommate, and as the title says she definitely has money problems. So Margo does what so many people do now, and that is turn to the internet to make money. This book was a wild ride from here.

Without giving too much away, I ended up liking Margo more throughout the novel as she developed and navigated her new life. This book surprised me in all the best ways. This is the second book I have read written by Rufi Thorpe, and I will definitely read any future books by her. Thank you to William Morrow, Rufi Thorpe, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review. 4.5 rounded up.

Full of multidimensional, vibrant characters this book delivers well beyond its premise. This portrayal of a young single mom who barely registers that she’s been very much taken advantage of by her child’s much older, married (not to her) college professor (to her) father is unpredictable and layered.

Margo gets pregnant from her professor. He wants her to get an abortion. She decides to keep the baby. She tries to waitress after the baby is born and gets fired. Child care is so expensive and Bodhi the baby only likes Margo. Her estranged father Jinx the former wrestler moves in. He tells her about Arabelle a former wrestler using only fans to make money. Margo is intrigued and decides to look into it.

This was an interesting novel. I learned alot more about Onlyfans. I enjoyed following Margo and learning about her life. I listened to half of it on @everand and really enjoyed Elle Fanning being the narrator. I really liked this book.

Margo is 19, has a baby, dropped out of college, lost her job, and two of her flatmates have moved out. How is she going to manage? In this warm-hearted, sex-positive novel, Margo finds an imaginative way to make money without needing to leave her home and her father, wrestling professional Dr. Jinx, moves in to help out.

Using strategies from the world of professional wrestling, Margo sets up an OnlyFans site and while the money doesn’t quite roll in, it more than trickles in. There are ups and downs along the way: Bodhi’s father, Margo’s English professor, wants custody, CPS makes a surprise visit, and Jinx relapses back into addiction. But Margo’s can-do attitude, smarts, and optimism sees her through.

Bodhi the baby is quite a character in his own right, and though Margo’s reasons for having a baby, and not an abortion, are quite wobbly, the mother-baby relationship is beautifully drawn. Looking the other way on the generational spectrum, Margo ‘s mother, Shyanne, is a familiar trope, marrying for security and living off her looks, but Jinx is a fresh and unusual take on a father and grandfather, but not what you’d necessarily expect from a manager of wrestlers called Murder and Mayhem.

Using Jinx’s promotional knowhow and Margo’s down to earth approach to her body, her OnlyFans site builds momentum. I found this quite fascinating as I was only peripherally aware of OnlyFans and I loved the utterly pragmatic and inventive ways that Margo approaches her site as a way to generate money and allow her to stay at home with Bodhi. And as well the financial gains, Margo also finds she has a devoted follower who is more interested in what she has to say than what she's showing.

Though this is a fairly slight story, it is an unusual look at getting by filled with breezy, richly developed characters.

Thanks to William Morrow and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

now THIS is an original story! truly can’t think of anything like this, and i can’t remember having this much fun throughout a book in a long time. overall, i really appreciated margo as a character, and continually found myself rooting for her and bodhi. 4.5 and thank you to the publisher for the ARC!

<i>You are about to begin reading a new book, and to be honest, you are a little tense. The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people's names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly know.</i>

Margo is still a teenager when her English professor gets her pregnant. And in the following weeks, despite everyone telling her not to, she decides to keep the pregnancy. She has an apartment that she shares with three other girls, the man who told her, over and over, how much he loves her, her best friend Becca and her mother. And once she has Bodhi, the professor ghosts her, her mother quickly tells her that she will not be helping out, her best friend disappears from her life, two of her roommates move out and she loses her job. Margo does indeed have money troubles, but money is only one of her problems.

<i>They had tried to warn her: her mother, Mark, even Becca. But when they talked about the opportunities she would be missing, she'd thought they meant a four-year college. She hadn't understood thy meant that every single person she met, every new friend, every love interest, every employer, every landlord, would judge her for having made what they all claimed was the "right" choice.</i>

But she's not without resources. First, there's the one roommate who didn't leave, and then there's her father, someone who was largely absent while she was growing up but now, fresh out of rehab, he needs a place to stay and he can pay rent. And he gives her an idea of how she can make money to take care of her and Bodhi. None of it is ideal, but there's a chance this odd family can make it work, or maybe the underlying issues are too serious to paper over with love and effort.

This book surprised me. Thorpe's writing is light and smart and she often goes for the clever wordplay over a more sincere telling. And Margo is a young woman who hides her own feelings with her quick mind and a careless attitude. But as this novel progresses, it doesn't take the easy way, or the expected direction, but chooses to be more real and complex and muddled in ways that make it more than the breezy language indicates. I ended up rooting for Margo to figure out a road between the many obstacles placed in her way.

I wasn't sure what to expect but I really enjoyed this! I'm a huge fan of coming-of-age stories and loved how much growth Margo experienced throughout. I can't say that I relate to a lot of what Margo went through but I loved her resiliency and wit. The side characters were great, especially Jinx, and everyone's dynamic was so interesting to see. I also loved the author's choice to flip between first and third person and thought it was smart to highlight the parts where it felt like Margo was disassociating from her story.

Wow, this was nothing like what I was expecting but I loved it. I found the switch between first and third person unique, Margo’s story compelling, and the literary critic fascinating. There is definitely a lot of social commentary but it wasn’t heavy-handed. A lot of complex topics are addressed in such a realistic way, it was really good. Highly recommend!

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the e-arc!

I definitely feel like I'm in the minority but this book wasn't for me. I thought Margo was a well-written character and 'unlikeable' and makes bad choices and those situations didn't bother me. I was really hung up on the switches between 1st and 3rd POV so much so it ruined the book for me. Don't know what the point of it was ?

I started this expecting to dislike Margo, but I found myself wanting to be friends with her by the end of the novel. Her life is messy--as our all of ours--but she handles it well and ends up being a great mom (also relatable, as I have a baby at home). I was worried her setbacks would feel like a slog, but Rufi Thorpe's pacing makes them feel compelling and surmountable. I also loved the narrative device of mixing third- and first-person POV because it makes the story feel more authentic and more vulnerable knowing that Margo had to distance herself from it.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a story like no other I have ever read.
Some content made me a tiny bit uncomfortable. I am old enough to have not know what OnlyFans was or that it was an actual site, but I consider myself open-minded and I don’t blush easily. I am glad I pressed on because this story has so much more.
It made me rethink or reevaluate my thinking when it comes to decisions other people make that I think I would have never done that! And when a book does this to me? A must read! I am no one to judge!
I enjoyed Margo, Jinx and even her mother’s characters. It actually made me sympathized.
Thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow for this ARC