Rufi Thorpe does it again, crafting a well written story about characters you will truly care about. Don’t miss it!

Incredibly quirky, entertaining and fun tale of Margot who becomes pregnant by her college freshman English teacher and decides to keep the baby when everyone encourages her to have an abortion. She rapidly realizes how naive she was when she gets fired from her waitress job and has no dependable daycare that will allow her to work. Her estranged Dad shows up and moves in when 2 of her roommates suddenly move out and they begin to bond and get to know each other. He introduces her to the marketing side of his pro wrestling career and tells her about a social media account on Onlyfans which is a risqué website. She opens an account and finds a way to monetise it using her writing talent and creativity while allowing her to spend lots of time at home with her son and until the baby Daddy finds out and sues for custody after having no interest in being a part of his life.

Margot, her parents and her roommate are all complex but extremely likeable characters and I found myself pulling for Margot as she stumbles, falls and gets back up in order to make a life for her son. Once I started reading I couldn’t put it down!

A heartwarming story of a young woman trying to figure it out.

Margo is attending junior college when she finds herself pregnant - from her English professor. Who's a jerk. And then, well, yeah, she needs money.

Friends have LOVED this one. I was super excited for it. And while it was an engaging read for me, I think some of the real-world issues took away from my enjoyment a bit - I kept bracing myself for disaster. (I'm not criticizing the representation, just saying that for me personally it's hard for a book to be a fun read when there's a real risk of [redacted to avoid spoilers])

To be sure, it was a one-day read and I really like how Rufi Thorpe writes characters - I was definitely rooting for Margo. The narration by Elle Fanning is great.

Right off the bat there is detailed description of a cake made in the likeness of male genitalia. Shortly thereafter there is encouragement of abortion and while the character does not give in to this, there was senseless content that follows that continued to kill any interest I had. With those content and trigger warnings within the first few pages, I can only imagine what the rest would entail. So DNF.

I adored The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe so I was incredibly excited to get this ebook ARC. Margo’s Got Money Troubles is such a wonderful, nuanced book about early motherhood and complicated parental relationships. Margo is 19/20 and becomes pregnant by her married English professor. She decides to keep the baby, but the father has exited her life. Soon after her son, Bodhi, is born, Margo’s distant father shows up on her doorstep needing a place to stay.

Her father, Jinx, is a former professional wrestler and has his own family separate from Margo’s. They have never been close as he focused on other commitments, mainly his wrestling career and his wife and children. Soon after having Bodhi, Margo realizes her options for working and her future are severely limited. She decides to start an OnlyFans page and through hard work and ingenuity, it begins to take off. Even so, things are not so simple. When her family and friends find out what she’s doing, there is a backlash.

Thorpe provides a nuanced look at how our culture still perceives sex work. Is the assumed degradation of posting photos/videos actually worse than working at degrading service jobs? She also depicts the difficulty of being a young single mother with limited resources. Margo feels having her baby is the right thing to do, but she’s given so little in terms of what’s needed to care for her child. Though Jinx is finally there for Margo and very helpful with Bodhi, he’s battling his own demons. What do we owe our family? Especially when it may jeopardize the wellbeing of our children? I really adored this funny, sometimes heartbreaking story about a young mother trying to figure things out.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

This book is an absolutely wonderful refreshing read. It gives an amazing look into the lengths that we would go to for our kids.

This story centers around Margo who is 19 years old and has an affair with her college professor. Needless to say she becomes pregnant and things start to go sideways.

I was rooting for Margo the entire time. She is so young but doesn’t let anything get in her way for long. She makes mistakes and really learns a lot about herself. I enjoyed the changed from first to third person narrator throughout the story. For me it made it much more real. Kind of like I was talking to a friend.

I’m excited to hear it’s been picked up by Apple TV, I think it would translate very well! I also think this is a great book club pick!

Thank you to NetGalley and Rufi Thorpe for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really wanted to love this book, but the hype didn’t pan out for me. Margo’s level of naivety about literally everything didn’t make sense to me and honestly distracted me throughout the story. You’re telling me the only daughter of a poor, narcissistic single mother and a famous absent father with a whole other family has no idea she’ll need money and childcare to live? Like, check please, I’m out 🥱 I did find the intersection of OnlyFans and TikTok interesting, but also next-level cringey. This one wasn’t for me—maybe more for the Gen Z girlies.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for an advanced readers copy of this book.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this novel, but overall I enjoyed it. Margo is a young adult who finds herself pregnant after having an affair with her married English professor. She thinks about abortion but decides it's not for her. Raised by a single mom herself, Margo was also the result of an affair with a married man, a former pro wrestler called Jinx.

Fired from her waitressing job and abandonned by 2 of her roommates due to her new baby, Margo finds herself at a crossroads. She turned to OnlyFans to try to make some money based on the offhand remark of her father, who has retired from the wrestling world and has moved into her apartment after finishing rehab.

Margo's Got Money Troubles is a fun and entertaining novel by Rufi Thorpe. It switches voices from Margo's 1st person narrative to 3rd person narrative, which was confusing at first but I got used to it.

This is definitely a situation where I should’ve paid better attention before clicking read now. This book is not for me, from the crude baby shower to the OnlyFans content. So glad people are loving it, but it’s absolutely not a book for me.

"Margo’s Got Money Troubles" was a delightful surprise! Even though I read the synopsis, I had no idea what I was getting into, but almost as soon as I started, I couldn’t put it down.

The story follows Margo, who becomes pregnant after an affair with her college professor. Choosing to keep the baby, she quickly learns that life is not kind to young, unprepared, unwed mothers. When she loses her job due to a lack of childcare, Margo opens an OnlyFans account, which turns into a surprising success. She also reconnects with her father, whom she barely knew as a child, and it starts to seem like maybe life won’t be so bad. That is, until the baby’s father comes back into the picture.

Although the premise seems heavy, "Margo’s Got Money Troubles" is a funny and witty take on a young mother down on her luck. Author Rufi Thorpe has crafted an engaging novel that reminds us that life isn’t always fair, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. This was my first introduction to the author, and I can't wait to read more.

I definitely recommend trying "Margo's Got Money Troubles"—you won't be disappointed!

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest and thoughtful review.

Enjoyable with some interesting plot details - compassionate POV For multiple very different characters (teen mom needing to make money somehow, bad dad seeking second chances, super conservative Christian boyfriend trying to handle things well…).

4.25 stars

Margo's Got Money Troubles was my first Rufi Thorpe novel and after finishing it, it will definitely not be my last. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did because I didn't know how I could ever relate to a 20-year-old who got pregnant via her college professor, kept the baby, started an OnlyFans, and lived with her ex-pro-wrestler dad. But somehow I did relate to her despite having almost no similarities and I think that was exactly the point.

Margo was in a position that was uniquely her own and although I'm sure women out there have gone through similar struggles, I am not one of them. That being said, I was rooting for Margo through every mistake, every naivete, through all the good and all the bad. She made me laugh, she made me want to cry, and she showed me how to be wholly empathetic to a situation I will never find myself in.

Thorpe's prose was enchanting, to say the least. I was intrigued from the first page and eventually finished the majority of the book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. It wasn't only Margo's story that I found myself so involved with - it was her dad, Jinx, and her roommate, Suzie, and the boy from the OnlyFans website, JB, and even Bodhi himself despite having no interest in having children of my own.

Margo and her complicated story had so much heart that I was disappointed to see it end. Thorpe did a wonderful job leaving the story where it was and allowing the audience to make assumptions of their own about the rest of Margo's life. I wouldn't call it an ambiguous ending because it wasn't open-ended more than it was left off in present tense, giving the audience the chance to see the direction it was taking, but nothing more specific than that - an ending I find perfectly suitable to the style of the rest of the book.

I loved this. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good read, anyone who feels lost, anyone who needs to see how horrible life can be sometimes, and anyone who knows that their life may not be what they wanted but that it's the cards they were dealt and they'll have to figure out where it takes them anyway.

Thank you to Willam Morrow and NetGalley for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars. I typically do not read books like this, but I am glad I decided to read this one because I did enjoy it. Margo is a 20-year-old unwed mother (she had an affair with her English professor while a student in her local junior college) who is struggling financially but does her best to help herself and her infant son survive. She is ambitious and resourceful, even when in the midst of a custody battle for her son. This is a heartwarming, sort of coming-of-age story, one replete with quite a few laugh-out-loud moments. Margo is simply a delightful character, one that I am glad to have gotten to know.

Knocked up by her college professor, nineteen year old Margo finds herself all alone with a new baby. With no support network to help with the care of little Bodhi, life is proving to be very difficult for Margo. Margo is bodacious; she’s intelligent, resourceful, creative, and an excellent mother. She’s trying so hard. She’ll have to overcome one obstacle after another if she’s going to be able to care for herself and her baby. Told with humor and charm, this is a wonderful heartfelt story about family and the many dilemmas facing young mothers. 4.25 stars

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the digital review copy.

This book falls into the "messy twenty-something" category, as we follow along with Margo. After a brief affair with a college professor, she winds up pregnant - and decides to keep the baby. Everyone warns her it will ruin her life, but she goes through with it anyway... only to come up against all the ways society isn't set up to support a single mother like her.

With the synopsis out of the way, let's dive right into my review of Margo's Got Money Troubles!

What I Liked About Margo's Got Money Troubles

Thorpe plays with point of view in a really interesting way here, with our first-person narrator stepping in occasionally to explain why certain parts of the story simply must be told in the third person. Throughout the book, we flip between first person and third person, and somehow, it just works.

Margo is somehow relatable even as she makes questionable choices and tries to rationalize them. She feels like a real, complicated character in the best way, even if her own narration sometimes calls her reliability as a narrator into question.

The subtle, wry humor throughout the book makes it enjoyable to read even as you're stressed out for the ways in which Margo's life is threatening to fall apart.

Thorpe also resists lining her characters into easy columns of good and evil, painting most of the main characters with nuance and complexity. They make bad choices, but they are rarely portrayed as doing so simply because they are evil or bad. Instead, we come to understand their humanity, even if we might not want to.

What I Didn't Like About Margo's Got Money Troubles

Honestly, this was a five-star read for me, and I don't have any major complaints with the book. I will say that, like most books these days, the ending felt like it came together a bit quickly. But, at the same time, it's not a neat bow so much as a slight indication that things might be better - for now.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Margo's Got Money Troubles is a must-read if you love the hot mess 20-something genre, particularly if you're looking for a book that does interesting things with perspective and storytelling. I absolutely loved the wild ride, even if it was stressful at times.

Brilliant storytelling by Rufi Thorpe!

This book was fun, heartfelt, quirky, and most of all, very relatable... I truly loved it! I was drawn into Margo's life right from the start, and I was rooting for her every step of the way. Margo not only struggles with being a single teen mom, but she also struggles with finding her place in this world. Follow her on a journey of self discovery and financial stability.

Rufi Thorpe has a new fan in me!

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe delighted and surprised me in the best way possible. The writing style and wit was amazing. Thorpe has such a unique voice, and this is a book I won't soon forget. I fell in love with Margo, Jinx, Bodie, and the whole crew. I ended up rooting for the characters and hope that somewhere in the multiverse, they are all doing okay.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Margo is twenty with a baby. Although she’s estranged from her father, a retired professional pro wrester, he comes back into her life, moving in with her in exchange for childcare. Using her father’s wrestling advice, Margo begins an OnlyFans page that takes off. I so wanted to love this book. I think this is the first time I felt “too old” for a particular book. I read young adult novels sometimes, so it’s not the subject matter, I just couldn’t connect with or relate to Margo in a way that the book wanted me to. I think this happens with books that are so rooted in the world of the Internet. I am sure this novel will be a better match for a different kind of reader.

Honestly, this was very close to a DNF for me. The narration of this book was very juvenile. Yes, I get that Margo is very young, and has been lured into an unethical sexual relationship with her professor that resulted in a pregnancy and baby, but it was just so hard to stay with her through all of her troubles, money and everything else.. There is both first person and third person narration, which is jarring. And there’s a lot of wink wink nod nod at the reader. It wears on me. The plot is pretty original—Margo’s dad is a drug addicted wrestling fan, and she learns from him how to think about acting and making money, which is how she ends up wildly successful on OnlyFans. I was hoping that at the end, I would have seen Margo grow up a bit, but honestly, she’s the same. She figures out how to take care of her son and continue making money, but only with the help of JB, who is a bit of a puppy person following her around. I get that so many love this book and called it witty and clever, but it just KNOWS it’s supposed to be witty and clever. I had a hard time with it.


Thank you NetGalley for the digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review,

What a fun, refreshing story! When Margo finds herself pregnant after sleeping with her English professor, she has to figure out a way to support herself and the baby. and her unconventional line of work on Only Fans made me alternately cringe and laugh out loud. You might not agree with her choices, but she did what worked best for her and her baby. This quirky book takes the reader on a roller coaster ride as Margo navigates her situation. As you might imagine, there are lots of interesting characters--her father is a former WWE wrestler-- and the pages practically turned themselves.