gwenswoons 's review for:

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

5.0

dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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God I enjoyed this so much — flew through it and am honestly still kind of amped up from the excitement and how big a change of pace this is for my normal reading! The sports drama, the competition, the super plotty mix of romance and mystery and thrills and all else. I loved the characters, especially Kat, though I also totally get that these are not “lovable” characters by any typical metric or taste. But I loved and related to the ferocious professional obsession and loved how it all unfolded. The shocks and agonies of it all worked so well, and I loved the intense jumpiness and voicey feeling of the documentary and interview format. I’m not usually a major fan of casted audiobooks — sometimes they feel fussy to me, and I generally prefer a single narrator who does a wonderful job to characterize the individual people — but this one was just spectacular, honestly, and I was riveted from the first moments to the last. I loved it. 

(A little unrelatedly, I tried to start Carrie Soto after this, high on the exceedingly-rare-for-me sports thrills, haha, and TJR just didn’t keep me engaged after ten or fifteen mins. I will try again!)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Outing, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, Classism