Sometimes you have to sacrifice everything to be the best – even if it means almost losing yourself along the way. A spoilery review of Layne Fargo’s latest novel
Hello and happy Wednesday everyone! The cold snap has passed here in Florida, and I hope everyone in other parts of the country have made it through the other side of that massive winter storm and are thawing out. I had to slather on a lot of moisturizer and lotion; freezing temps with high humidity is killer.
Today I’m gonna chat a bit about the novel “The Favorites” by Layne Fargo. I’m not sure what got me to pick up this book. I think I saw it pop up on Goodreads and it sounded intriguing. Also, it’s about Olympic figure skating, so it’s the perfect time to read it with the Winter Olympics going on!
Here’s a quick synopsis: Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha have known each other since they were kids. With both having to experience a less-than-ideal childhood, they both cling to skating – and each other – over the years to escape from their home lives. As the years go by, their skills and chemistry make them a formidable duo on the ice. They’re going to win Olympic gold, and nothing will stop them.
Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games shatters their partnership – and relationship – forever.
Now, ten years after those games, a new documentary about the pair is coming out, and Kat wants nothing to do with it. So instead she tells her own story about her life: from childhood all the way to what truly happened on that fateful day.
My star rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Overall I enjoyed this book. I was never bored and it always felt like things were moving forward at a decent clip. This is probably due to the sheer amount of time and years the story goes through. We see Kat and Heath at home in the Midwest as teenagers, going to their first competitive skating competition. We see sprinkles of them as kids, when they first start skating together, then go through their twenties, then finally the end in present time. There are some time jumps and what I like to call “montage moments” where things just move very fast. Blink and you’ll miss Kat and Heath winning a certain competition. Things like that. Normally not too much of a bother, but I’m a fast reader, so sometimes sentences don’t fully sink into my brain when I’m reading and I have to flip back and see what I missed.
I know, I know… I’m trying to work on that.
Anyhoodle, the time jumps. Overall a fine way to show the progression of Kat and Heath as both who they are as people, but also who they are as skaters. I don’t know too much about figure skating other than they wear awesome outfits and perform amazing feats of stamina and agility, but from what I can gather, they don’t compete every week. There’s a lot to skating; while they practice for hours a day, multiple days a week, the Olympics are still four years apart. Other bigger competitions that can get a skater to qualify for the Olympics are spread out as well. It seems like a very “hurry up and wait” kind of sport. So I can see why the author didn’t want to slog through the years and just get to the juicier stuff.
I also liked the mix of traditional narrative and the documentary-style moments throughout the book. It’s formatted to have the documentary address certain moments in Kat and Heath’s lives, then ask the handful of people who were involved or a part of that moment to explain in their own words. Basically just quick quotes from different characters. This goes on for a few pages at a time, then it cuts to Kat’s version of events, written in first-person narrative form. It’s a clever way to write this story: after all, the whole reason Kat’s finally telling her story is due to the documentary being released. It’s a nice volley, a good back-and-forth between what everyone’s always said about her to Kat finally telling the world her truth. Is it the actual truth? We don’t know for sure, but it’s hers.
Now, the reasoning for the 3.5 rating: While there are romantic moments in this book, I don’t find this to be a romance book. It could be me and my millennial-geriatric ass, but Kat and Heath’s relationship was very toxic to me, and I felt rather uncomfortable with it throughout the novel.
We see these two teenagers at the beginning of the book. Kat lives with her older brother after her father dies, and her brother’s an asshole to say the least. He treats her like crap, and he absolutely hates Heath. He’s a drunk and can’t hold down a job. It’s a rather cliche story for the most part. So we already know she grew up in a toxic home.
Heath also has had a bad childhood. Not much can be said for how he ended up where he did, but he was a foster child and would always stay over at Kat’s place. Kat’s family had a small barn on their property and if Kat’s brother was home, she’d sneak Heath into the barn and get him some food and blankets so he didn’t go hungry or freeze to death. (You know, since it’s the Midwest and all.) Pretty bleak, right? So already there’s a pretty heavy tone to start this story.
Oh, and also Kat’s brother threatens to kill her on like, page 15? So that’s not-too cheery either. To put it mildly, skating was a way for Kat and Heath to escape their tragic home lives. Wait, let me clarify: skating was a way for Kat to escape; for Heath, it was a way to always be close to Kat, no matter what. Which brings me to my next gripe.
This relationship is toxic. I’m sorry, I don’t see love and a stable relationship with this. Are they teenagers? Yes. Does all their drama happen when they’re teenagers and in their early 20’s where they’re still trying to figure out who they are as humans outside of skating? Yes. So is it expected? Maybe so; but again, I’m not seeing this as a romance novel because of it.
Kat and Heath have only known and have only relied on each other since they were kids. The story of tragic children working their asses off and making it to the Olympics? An amazing story, of course. The stuff media execs drool over because they see dollar signs with stories like that. It’s feel-good.
But damn, their relationship is unhealthy. They get their “big break” and go to this former Olympian’s skating camp in Los Angeles filled with other skaters, including the Olympian’s children, Bella and Garrett. Kat and Heath find out it’s kind of like a boarding school where the girls sleep in one wing of the building and the boys in the other. Kat and Heath cannot fathom that. They get nervous and scared to have to be separated, even though they’ll be skating and sweating their asses off with each other. For hours. Every day. They are so codependent on each other that the sleeping arrangements give them pause. That’s not healthy folks! I get their circumstances, but again, not healthy. I mean, it’s right there in the tagline of the novel: “To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, they were an obsession.” Obsession in a relationship is no bueno. Red flags, people! Obsession is not love!
I’m not saying that the dynamic between the two doesn’t make sense. With what they went through and how they’ve only been able to rely on each other, it makes total sense. It just doesn’t feel like a romance novel because of it, so that’s why I’m confused about the label of it on places like Goodreads.
A big thing that made me raise my eyebrows and go, “wow,” was soon after a pivotal moment in the book. In the middle of all this hullabaloo, Kat and Heath end their partnership and Kat ends up partnering with Garrett for a while. Garrett is the son of the Olympian, Sheila, who Kat always looked up to and strived to be when she was a child. When this happens, Heath fades into obscurity. No one knows what happened to him. Kat can’t get a hold of him. He’s been non-existent for three years. Then suddenly, here he is at one of Kat and Garrett’s competitions. And wouldn’t you freakin’ know it, he’s now Bella’s (Garrett’s sister) new partner. He’s gotten substantially better at the sport and is kicking ass with Bella in competitions, which angers Kat of course.
It angers her, but it also seems to make her sad. See this line:
“His love for me hadn’t been motivation enough to reach his full potential. His hatred, though? That made him capable of anything.”
Kat could see it, and we as the reader could see it: He skated with Kat to be near her. He felt like he had to be the best skating partner to keep her, and when he wasn’t good enough, he did everything in his power to prove he could be. Whether it be for her, or for himself. Buuuut it was mostly for her. Which leads me to:
Heath was never his own person. Heath’s character was a rough one. I didn’t really feel like he wanted to skate just to skate. Or skate for himself. It always felt like it was something he wanted to do for Kat. Be the best for Kat so she can get her gold. He never cared for the gold, he cared for her. Aw, so sweet. But again, so toxic.
Even after they broke up and stopped being skating partners, I wasn’t sure who Heath was as a person. He disappears after Kat drops him like a bad habit, but shows up three years later as a much better skater with a different partner? He became so bitter and angry because of it that those emotions fueled his comeback? He wanted to skate again to take Kat down? Again, it all centers around her. Even when he was away and mysteriously training and getting better at skating, it was always about her. He came back to create toxicity and drama for the next part of the book and it felt thin. I never once felt like he wanted to skate for himself, and that bummed me out as a reader for his character. I wanted more from him, and more for him.
There are more moments that happen in the book where I begin to lose sympathy for him; I’ve already said some spoilers in this review and I don’t want to do too many more. But let’s just say he does a good amount of character assassination and it’s all because of – what? Who again? Oh, that’s right, because of Kat. All of his choices are because of her. It gets to the point where I get 300+ pages into this novel and I want to smack this boy silly. I grew cynical of Heath, and it makes me no longer care for his relationship with Kat. Honestly? They both need therapy.
I won’t go too into the weeds with the ending, because again, I don’t want to add more spoilers than I already have, but the ending is… okay. I can see hope with most of the characters. I can see how they’re slowly getting better and growing as people, but they’re all still too close to the world of figure skating to really know who they are as people outside of that, so it’s hard to tell. Even in their 30’s they can’t fully escape. How it ended with Kat and Heath was just one big shrug to me. There is potential for them to be okay, but I honestly can’t see them being okay together as romantic partners. Even the final page is Kat saying how they’ll be in each other’s lives until they die, no matter what happens. And I just… I sighed heavily at that. Like, okay? I wasn’t expecting a grand gesture or for them to finally get married, but it didn’t feel like there was much progression on that front. It felt very, “We went through all this shit and we came out the other side alive, and that’s good enough for us.”
I guess, in the end, that’s all we can expect from Kat and Heath. Because it could’ve been worse. They could’ve died or something.
Okay, I’ll leave it there. I know it feels very abrupt to end my review like this, but I guess I’m keeping with the theme of the ending of the novel. Here’s a more succinct way to end it: I enjoyed the figure skating side of the novel, but not so much the personal relationship side; especially Kat and Heath. I still think it’s a worthy read, even if this review felt more scathing. I honestly wasn’t expecting that when I started writing it.
Have you read “The Favorites” by Layne Fargo? How did you like it? What were your favorite – or not so favorite – parts? Would you classify this as a romance? Let me know down in the comments, I love to hear from you!
Until next time, my lovelies!
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