Margo's Got Money Troubles and PEOPLE's Got an Excerpt: 'I Only Slept With Him Because He Had the Power' (Exclusive)

A new book about taking control of your own narrative is already making waves ahead of its release. Rufi Thorpe's Margo's Got Money Troubles, which has already been optioned for a screen adaptation, is poised to be a hit this summer.

According to the publisher, Margo is the daughter of a Hooter's waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, so she didn't exactly grow up with a roadmap to success. When she has a brief affair with her junior college English professor and finds herself pregnant, Margo decides to keep the baby and go it solo as a single mom.

She's broke, struggling to care for her infant alone and on the verge of eviction when her dad, Jinx, shows up and offers to help with childcare in return for a place to crash. When she starts an OnlyFans just to see what happens and finds it taking off, she adapts some of her dad's wrestling advice for the platform, with both surprisingly successful and just plain surprising results.

Hooked yet? You're not alone. After an intense bidding war between almost a dozen players, it was reported that A24 has acquired rights to develop a potential series, with David E. Kelley in talks to co-write the TV adaptation. Additionally, Nicole Kidman as well as Elle and Dakota Fanning’s production companies are attached to executive produce the project.

While you wait for the book's June release, PEOPLE has an exclusive excerpt to help tide you over:

The thing about Bodhi’s dad that was so confusing was that of course I only slept with him because he had the power, of course it was the fact that he was my English professor, my favorite class.

And yet so much of what compelled me was the way he kept insisting that I had the power. Which one of us actually had it, though? I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this.

Aside from impregnating me and kind of ruining my life, Mark helped me a great deal with my writing. He went over every sentence of my papers with me, touching on each one and how it could be better. He would give me A’s, then demand I rewrite the papers anyway.

"What you are,” he said, “is too important not to polish.” He would point out a sentence I had written, demanding, “What were you trying to say here?” And I would tell him, stuttering, what I had intended, and he would say, “Just say that. Don’t pussyfoot around.”

It was only after he’d been helping me this way for several weeks that the affair started. One day, I was supposed to go to his office. When I got there, he said he couldn’t focus and could we meet another day, and I said sure. But then we wound up leaving the building at the same time and that turned into going on a walk together, and he vented about everything, all his frustrations about the department and his wife and kids and how trapped he felt by his life. “And I don’t even deserve my shitty life,” he said. “I’m a horrible person.”

“You are not,” I said. “You’re an amazing teacher! You’ve spent all this time with me, helping me.”

“Every second of which I was desperately wanting to kiss you.”

I did not know what to say to that. I mean, in a way I had a schoolgirlish crush on him, but I’d never thought about kissing him. I just felt glow-y and good whenever he praised me.

It was raining, and we had been walking in circles around campus. We didn’t have umbrellas, but we were both wearing jackets with hoods. We’d stopped underneath a huge eucalyptus tree.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked.

I nodded. I mean, I literally could not have imagined saying no. I would have done anything he asked. He was short, maybe five foot five, my height, and I had never kissed a boy that short before, and it was kind of nice, with both of our hoods up in the rain. But even I was like, We are kissing openly on campus? This seems like a very bad idea.

The thing was, by the time everything was over between us, he had behaved so childishly, and I’d had to assume so much of the responsibility for what we’d done, that I didn’t feel taken advantage of. I felt . . .pissed off. If he had actually been a grown-up, the whole thing never would have happened in the first place.

Excerpted from the book MARGO’S GOT MONEY TROUBLES by Rufi Thorpe. Copyright © 2024 by Rufi Thorpe. From William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.

Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe is on sale June 11 and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.