Twenty-year-old Margo, child of a Hooter’s waitress and an ex-pro-wrestler, got money troubles, but she’s always known she’d have to make it on her own. When she finds herself pregnant by her college English professor, naïve and drifting – who is very keen not to be involved – she realizes she will need cash fast. She hadn’t thought through the consequences of having a baby- now  she’s lost her waitressing job and it looks unlikely she  will be able to afford her rent. Although Margo lacks in options she makes up for in ingenuity, and soon she has a plan. She’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, producing content and writing storylines unlike anything else out there. Help arrives in the form of her live-action role-playing flatmate Suzie, and her father Jinx- a recovering addict and veteran of the wrestling world, who has experience of making an audience fall in love. Margo discovers the money-making possibilities of OnlyFans.

Before she knows it, Margo is an online phenomenon. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price? She is soon a hit, but virtual success has real world repercussions and prompts some serious questions about who is wielding the power in the scenario Margo has created. “Hometown girl makes good, defies capitalist patriarchy, or teen whore sells nudes while nursing, too lazy to work”? Can it be both? And is there room amid all this for real romance? Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, offer serious challenges to ideas about young mothers and sex work  while being snapped up for an Apple TV series, Starring Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, Sceptre £16.99, 294 pages