Punish Me, Please and Hurt Me, Good (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798197782274)

What if your biggest prayer was answered as a punishment?

Rhea Mowatt is exhausted. At thirty years old, she counts nickels like a prayer, stretches a single rotisserie chicken into a week of hope, and has named the crack in her ceiling "Carl." With $14.62 in her bank account and a soul worn thin by poverty, she stops praying to God and starts praying to the universe instead.

Punish me, Please and Hurt Me, Good.

She doesn't expect an answer. But one appears.

A mysterious text. A deposit of one million dollars. And a single, cruel condition from a man in an expensive suit: "You don't get to be used to it."

Suddenly, Rhea can buy the couch she is terrified to sit on, the $12 latte that tastes like regret, and the avocados she used to cry over. But money doesn't fix her-it gives her better lighting to see how broken she is. As the monthly millions pile up, Rhea must confront the difference between being broke and being free, and whether the punishment she asked for might actually be the gift she needed.

From the cracked ceilings of a studio apartment to the cold geometry of a penthouse, Punish me, Please & Hurt Me, Good is a raw, funny, and painfully honest novel about poverty, privilege, and the terrifying act of learning how to want.

For fans of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Such a Fun Age, this is a story about the golden chains we beg for-and the hunger that remains.