Margo's Got Money Troubles

Margo Millet is twenty, broke, and out of good options. The daughter of a Hooters waitress and a semi-famous professional wrestler who was never really around, she has spent her life improvising. So when an ill-advised affair with her married community-college English professor leaves her pregnant — and then a single mother with a baby, an eviction notice, and a mountain of bills — she improvises again.

Out of desperation, Margo starts an OnlyFans account, half as a joke and half as a business experiment. To her surprise, it works, especially once her estranged wrestler father, Jinx, moves onto her couch and starts coaching her on the one thing he genuinely understands: how to build a persona, tell a story, and give an audience a reason to keep watching. But online success brings its own tangle of complications, and a looming custody fight threatens the fragile life Margo is trying to hold together.

Rufi Thorpe's Margo's Got Money Troubles is a warm, funny, big-hearted novel about motherhood, money, reinvention, and the strange forms family can take. Sharp about sex work, class, and the internet without ever moralizing, it's a coming-of-age story for a heroine who refuses to be anyone's cautionary tale.