Margo’s Got Money Troubles – Breaking Stereotypes: A Mother’s Choices in Challenging Times

Information

• Goodreads: 3.97 out of 31,626
• Age category: Adult; New Adult
• Genre: Contemporary
• Series: None

Summary

Margo was a regular college student when a stupid, yucky boy who was also her professor starts sleeping with her. He’s just out here very casually cheating on his wife. And then Margo gets pregnant and he thinks he gets a say on whether or not she keeps the child (aka throwing her life away) or terminating the pregnancy and living her best life. As you guessed, Margo does not make the decision Mark the professor wanted her to.

Have you ever sat in your apartment and wondered what the hell you were going to do to put money on the table? Have you ever genuinely wondered if OnlyFans had the potential to give both you and your child a place to live? Have you ever wondered if you were a good person/mom/daughter if you make a certain choice that would upset your parents? If you answered yes to anything, this book is for you.

Review

Content warning: substance use, OnlyFans work, Motherhood, power imbalance relationships

This book is full of people you’ll love and hate. Fuck Mark and Margo’s mom, honestly. So much of what Margo is going through is so relatable and interesting. She’s a young mom with one absentee + drug addict parent and the other is obsessed with image without ever actually connecting with Margo. Oddly enough, after Professor Mark’s mommy made Margo sign an NDA, it’s the drug addict parent that ends up helping Margo during this.

We get to see as Margo and Jinx (her dad) begin to build a relationship after years of him not being around. Jinx is able to talk about why he wasn’t around, kind of. He’s dealing with substance use disorder, with his drug of choice being Heroin. Jinx is also a retired pro-wrestler who is in constant pain, resulting in an incredibly real loop of becoming clean, getting hurt, going to the doctor and being prescribed pain relievers, abusing those pain relievers, then relapsing on heroin. Jinx’s story is something I feel a lot of addict could relate to. He does eventually get on methadone, with multiple characters saying that methadone is basically trading one drug for another. I am happy to say it was a relief seeing characters within the book arguing against that. Methadone treatment has a success rate of 60-90%, allowing these individuals to have their basic needs (housing, food, safety, etc) met in order to learn the coping skills needed for longterm abstinence. Everyone has a different opinion on being on Methadone indefinitely, but that doesn’t change the success rate with utilized as a medication assisted treatment.

Throughout the story, Margo bonds with her baby and decides to begin doing OnlyFans for work to keep them safe and happy. Because of that, everyone in her life has so much to say, always. And Margo is left wondering, what the hell is wrong with the job that keeps food on her table? The book explores how so many people feel as if the two things cannot be true at the same time: a Mother can have an OnlyFans and she can be a safe and secure person and environment for a child to be around. As soon as professor Mark hears about her job, Margo’s job is put under scrutiny. Sure, he cheated on his wife often and without remorse and had a secret baby who he admittedly reports having looked at as Margo’s baby that just happened to have his DNA. But no, Margo is the one who is unfit to be a mother. And of course someone close to Margo calls CPS on her for her job. And, to add onto the bullshit, of course CPS would tell Margo her baby will be taken if her father, a recovering addict, continues to lives with her while on Methadone.

This is a story of society’s outcasts. The people we love to make fun of (look at that crackhead on the corner) and the people we love to look at (how many OnlyFans accounts have you made in secret?) are the same ones we’re ashamed to know personally. This book doesn’t glamorize substance use or having OnlyFans as a job. It details different ways OnlyFans can be harmful. And we all know how substance use can impact someone’s quality of life. But it does ask why we instantly feel the need to look down on these people when they’re someone we know. Jinx and Margo have my heart. Margo is selling photos of her body and she is a great mom and intelligent and creative. Jinx was an absent father in active use and now he is a present grandfather in recovery. I loved this book and cannot recommend it enough.