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A review by rafafinhass
The Favorites by Layne Fargo
challenging
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I took a day to think about this book and the truth is that it's nothing more than an average story, which is quite sad, considering that Layne Fargo definitely knows how to put together something that keeps you hooked.
My biggest disappointment with The Favorites is the construction and development of not only the characters but also the relationships between them.
Fargo had everything anyone could ever ask for: a super interesting model of a documentary about ice figure skaters and a bunch of characters with very well-designed focuses and roles. However, she ended up blowing it all up by putting too much stuff in the book and not deciding to develop any of them.
In the end, for me, everything seems to have not had the effect she expected.
I really like ambitious characters and an extremely messy cast with their bad sides that are explained by their desires and pasts.
Katarina is, for me, the best character in the book. Maybe because we are in her head throughout the narrative, but I think what she represents is something much better than the rest of the book.
But she is far from being the controversial character that everyone paints her as in this documentary.
And she is far from being someone who does anything to win as everyone (even her!) says in this book. It's too much talk and little truth.
I think Layne made a huge mistake in wasting her character like that.
It's very difficult to understand the will of the characters in this book when nothing is well constructed.
Everyone is extremely one-dimensional. Kat wants a medal, Bella wants to win at all costs, Heath is obsessed with Kat, Garrett suffers from the pressure of sports, Ellis has a gossip blog, and so on.
Almost 500 pages of reading, and I can't tell you any other interest these people have besides what I mentioned. Who are these people besides the roles that the author gave them while drawing the backbone of this book?
There is nothing real about them. And this lack of personality causes a problem for the relationships between them.
Heath is obsessed with Kat because she got him out of a terrible place and she's obsessed because she needed a skating partner, but other than that, what makes them feel the slightest bit of love and attraction besides being a retelling of Wuthering Heights?
There is no complexity whatsoever between their relationship and the Love vs. Winning issue, no matter how hard the author tries to make something exist.
The fights they have are extremely futile, and there is no plausible enough reason for them to be attracted to each other.
It is impossible to understand anything about their relationship. They are intimate, but they do not talk. They are attracted to each other, but they cannot keep the flame alive after becoming famous. They have only one purpose in life (very different, by the way), but at the first opportunity, they do the opposite of what would lead them to success.
So what? What is the truth? Who are they?
It is very frustrating when the author tries to create complexity for the characters' relationship, when in fact it is just a conversation between them and everything is resolved.
It's not as hard as they make it seem. It's not as high stakes as it seems.
Not even other relationships outside of romantic ones are developed: what makes Bella Kat's best friend when their conversations in the book are nothing deeper than the desire to win? There's nothing that convinces me that these two understand each other. I don't think a rivalry between friends is enough for the friendship to continue in such a strong way.
Bella ends up betraying Kat three times in very serious ways, and you tell me it's just a friendly rivalry?
I like a story full of mess and problems, but only when it's well done.
The lack of connection I had with these characters only made me feel angry at the things that happened in the book because none of them were enough to make me feel outraged by any of them. They were just unfair scenes, and I couldn't understand why Kat was angry at Heath or why Bella was such a terrible person if their motives were so lame.
And I understand it all even less when they forgive each other because I don't even know why they even talk to each other.
I know that Fargo tried to follow the real Heathcliff's line, but it lacked enough study to understand how the character is so good and complex due to his past.
The Heath in this book is just obsessed for no reason. He makes the worst decisions, and we are expected to have some kind of compassion for him.
Cheating on Kat for revenge right after saying that she is everything he ever wanted? With her ex-best friend, who also had no reason to do this, since they didn't even talk to each other properly and she had no chance of a higher position for better medals? All of it just because they had ONE small fight in a night that Kat clearly wasn't at her best?
The Game was by far the worst part for me in The Favorites. If I had hopes for this book to be 5 stars at around 30%, it was hard to continue believing that when the worst fight between the characters was caused by them no longer feeling attracted to each other.
For a character who wants to win so much (but doesn't do much to achieve it), Kat certainly gets carried away by every little thing while she's skating. Whether for better or worse, she gets carried away.
Aside from the characters' problems and the feeling that I don't know any of them intimately, I think the story is a compilation of a bunch of unnecessary things.
There's so much happening in Kat's competitions that I think it borders on surreal.
I think the worst thing for me was that thriller-style endingwith several sabotages. In the end, even the Russian mafia was involved in the story.
Heath was thrown through a goddamn window. It's so cartoonish.
Although I don't think it's hard for Russian mafia to be involved in real life (the competition between the US and Russia in ice skating is kinda crazy), in the book, it seems very disconnected from the rest of the story. There are a lot of big things happening all the time. It gave me the feeling that the author was writing it hoping that the book would become a limited series on some streaming service.
It has so much and not even a single commentary on parental abuse (she does talk a lot about Sheila, but kinda forgives her at the end) and eating disorders. Two of the biggest problems in ice figure skating.
And ending the last partof a sabotage with blood, cuts, and POISONING (in an ice skating story!) with such a cliché ending is outrageous.
I expected more of a tragedy than the nonsense of "family and people are more important than winning <3".
It's too simplistic and shows how this story is not at all complex.
And even worse is that the main character herself says that she and Heath break up and get back together all the time and they don't know if they're going to end their lives loving each other or killing each other.
For those who wanted to give the impression of being mature, they just came across the opposite. This shows that the characters haven't evolved at all. They accept a lot of things, but all it takes is one problem for them to go back to being hot-headed and extremely jealous.
Nothing is developed, everything is too absurd, and the ending is disappointing.
For all the 5 ratings this book has, I expected much more.
I think the way the story is told is very interesting, but I think it needs a lot of study of what makes Wuthering Heights a classic and Taylor Jenkins Ried so good at famous characters and fake documentaries.
The Favorites is a patchwork of several key points of references that it drinks from, but without really understanding the depth of them and how they change the story completely.
My biggest disappointment with The Favorites is the construction and development of not only the characters but also the relationships between them.
Fargo had everything anyone could ever ask for: a super interesting model of a documentary about ice figure skaters and a bunch of characters with very well-designed focuses and roles. However, she ended up blowing it all up by putting too much stuff in the book and not deciding to develop any of them.
In the end, for me, everything seems to have not had the effect she expected.
I really like ambitious characters and an extremely messy cast with their bad sides that are explained by their desires and pasts.
Katarina is, for me, the best character in the book. Maybe because we are in her head throughout the narrative, but I think what she represents is something much better than the rest of the book.
But she is far from being the controversial character that everyone paints her as in this documentary.
And she is far from being someone who does anything to win as everyone (even her!) says in this book. It's too much talk and little truth.
I think Layne made a huge mistake in wasting her character like that.
It's very difficult to understand the will of the characters in this book when nothing is well constructed.
Everyone is extremely one-dimensional. Kat wants a medal, Bella wants to win at all costs, Heath is obsessed with Kat, Garrett suffers from the pressure of sports, Ellis has a gossip blog, and so on.
Almost 500 pages of reading, and I can't tell you any other interest these people have besides what I mentioned. Who are these people besides the roles that the author gave them while drawing the backbone of this book?
There is nothing real about them. And this lack of personality causes a problem for the relationships between them.
Heath is obsessed with Kat because she got him out of a terrible place and she's obsessed because she needed a skating partner, but other than that, what makes them feel the slightest bit of love and attraction besides being a retelling of Wuthering Heights?
There is no complexity whatsoever between their relationship and the Love vs. Winning issue, no matter how hard the author tries to make something exist.
The fights they have are extremely futile, and there is no plausible enough reason for them to be attracted to each other.
It is impossible to understand anything about their relationship. They are intimate, but they do not talk. They are attracted to each other, but they cannot keep the flame alive after becoming famous. They have only one purpose in life (very different, by the way), but at the first opportunity, they do the opposite of what would lead them to success.
So what? What is the truth? Who are they?
It is very frustrating when the author tries to create complexity for the characters' relationship, when in fact it is just a conversation between them and everything is resolved.
It's not as hard as they make it seem. It's not as high stakes as it seems.
Not even other relationships outside of romantic ones are developed: what makes Bella Kat's best friend when their conversations in the book are nothing deeper than the desire to win? There's nothing that convinces me that these two understand each other. I don't think a rivalry between friends is enough for the friendship to continue in such a strong way.
Bella ends up betraying Kat three times in very serious ways, and you tell me it's just a friendly rivalry?
I like a story full of mess and problems, but only when it's well done.
The lack of connection I had with these characters only made me feel angry at the things that happened in the book because none of them were enough to make me feel outraged by any of them. They were just unfair scenes, and I couldn't understand why Kat was angry at Heath or why Bella was such a terrible person if their motives were so lame.
And I understand it all even less when they forgive each other because I don't even know why they even talk to each other.
I know that Fargo tried to follow the real Heathcliff's line, but it lacked enough study to understand how the character is so good and complex due to his past.
The Heath in this book is just obsessed for no reason. He makes the worst decisions, and we are expected to have some kind of compassion for him.
The Game was by far the worst part for me in The Favorites. If I had hopes for this book to be 5 stars at around 30%, it was hard to continue believing that when the worst fight between the characters was caused by them no longer feeling attracted to each other.
For a character who wants to win so much (but doesn't do much to achieve it), Kat certainly gets carried away by every little thing while she's skating. Whether for better or worse, she gets carried away.
Aside from the characters' problems and the feeling that I don't know any of them intimately, I think the story is a compilation of a bunch of unnecessary things.
There's so much happening in Kat's competitions that I think it borders on surreal.
I think the worst thing for me was that thriller-style ending
Heath was thrown through a goddamn window.
It has so much and not even a single commentary on parental abuse (she does talk a lot about Sheila, but kinda forgives her at the end) and eating disorders. Two of the biggest problems in ice figure skating.
And ending the last part
I expected more of a tragedy than the nonsense of "family and people are more important than winning <3".
It's too simplistic and shows how this story is not at all complex.
For those who wanted to give the impression of being mature, they just came across the opposite. This shows that the characters haven't evolved at all. They accept a lot of things, but all it takes is one problem for them to go back to being hot-headed and extremely jealous.
Nothing is developed, everything is too absurd, and the ending is disappointing.
For all the 5 ratings this book has, I expected much more.
I think the way the story is told is very interesting, but I think it needs a lot of study of what makes Wuthering Heights a classic and Taylor Jenkins Ried so good at famous characters and fake documentaries.
The Favorites is a patchwork of several key points of references that it drinks from, but without really understanding the depth of them and how they change the story completely.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Pregnancy
Moderate: Alcoholism, Drug abuse, Blood, Outing, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Homophobia, Classism