The Favourites by Layne Fargo brings all the mixed feelings. I was hooked from the start by the story of Kat and Heath (I mean, Wuthering Heights, anyone?) and the fact it was told in a style similar to Daisy Jones and the Six really hammered down the way in which the author envisaged this book as a tell-all biopic. I loved Kat’s sheer single-mindedness of an athlete that is competitive and cares about the sport and her own success. Heath was a bit too hidden in this story to get a good glimpse at him as a character, but the air of the mystery played well in this context. I really, really liked Bella and Garrett and their personas shaped by their one-minded mother, Sheila. Bella might have been cruel but she was also Kat’s equal, and it was good to see another heroine who chose sport over a more conventional life. Garratt was a sweetheart. So far so good. When I started the book I expected love stories and triumphs and grand gestures. Here, the author managed to surprise me – it is very much true that Kat’s first love was skating – not Heath – and I liked the way this got more obvious as the book progressed. BUT. I really think this book was far too long. The complications and the heartbreaks people suffer in this book might have filled in another novel. They triumph. They fail. They triumph. They fail. They split. They come back. They love. They hate each other. They split. Come back. Sort of come back. Suffer? Not suffer? Are fine…? I really want to avoid spoilers, but the ending was good but not great. And yet. I was still somehow invested in the story. Possibly because I love figure skating – I still remember Anissina and Peizerat performing, and her lifting him (!!!) and Papadakis and Cizeron absolutely smashed their free programme a couple years ago. So maybe I am biased and this is why I was still somehow gripped by The Favourites, despite the length and occasional eye-rolling moments. In the end, skating is all about performance, drama and attitude, and this book has it all.

This book had so much hype i was so excited when this appeared. I heard it was like 'From Lukov with Love' and 'Daisy Jones and The Six' and this really lived up to its hype. I loved the obession and the way this was written and I cannot wait to tell everyone about it!

The Favourites pulls you into the ruthless world of ice skating, where ambition and obsession blur the line between love and destruction. Kat and Heath’s relationship is intense and all-consuming, making every triumph and betrayal feel larger than life. The dual timeline keeps the tension sharp, slowly unraveling the secrets behind their rise and fall. It’s dramatic, compelling, and impossible to put down. If you’re into competitive sports, messy relationships, and high-stakes drama, this one delivers.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK (Vintage), and Layne Fargo for a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My goodness! What drama! This is definitely one for the Daisy Jones and The Six fans out there. The Favourites follows Katarina and Heath (yes, this is a Wuthering Heights retelling) throughout their career as Olympic-level ice dancers and the thirty-odd years they've known each. Told as both a documentary transcript premiering ten years after "the worst day of [Katarina's] life" and also told directly from Katarina's perspective, you uncover the absolutely insane journey they went on to achieve Olympic gold.

I was definitely hooked after about a quarter of the way through, the first quarter being a bit slower-paced. But as soon as the drama, the lies, and the betrayal started to unfold, it did not stop! There were times when so much was happening that I began to feel slightly overwhelmed, and a lot of the Wuthering Heights references felt a bit too on the nose that they did become a distraction at points.

Overall though, if you like fictional historical stories, à la Daisy Jones and The Six or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and prefer a lot of twists and turns throughout - keep The Favourites in your mind when looking for your next read.

Wow. I am still recovering from this book&can’t stop thinking about it. I haven’t felt physically sick while reading a story in so long&the tears I shed. Damn.

I’ve always loved the novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ and when I heard ‘The Favourites’ was a retelling of it, I was instantly very curious.

The book follows Kat&Heath, childhood friends, trying to become professional ice dancers&make it to the Olympics. The writing style is fantastic and so special. Each chapter is partly narrated by Kat and half is told through interviews of coaches, judges, friends, fellow ice skaters as part of a documentary.

I was instantly so immersed in the story and read this book in less than a day. This is not your usual ‘happy romance’ story; there’s toxicity, betrayal, competition, love, friendship, self-growth, etc. the characters were all complex, had so many layers and I would cry and root for them.

Having grown up doing competitive sport, I loved how you get to see how competitive sport is and how it takes over your life.

I had to instantly order a physical copy of this book to have on my bookshelf and can’t wait to recommend it to everyone.

Thank you so so much to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for letting me read this masterpiece 🖤⛸️✨

I fear I may never recover from this book. Even if I do, it will stay with me forever.

This book was incredible. The characters were so well fleshed out and felt genuinely real; I expected to Google them and see videos of all their performances. Kat, Heath, Bella, and even Garrett are such real people in my mind, each having to make such difficult decisions. The character growth was phenomenal. Heath is a man you hate to love, but I fear I'll never forgive him for one thing he did. Bella and Kat's friendship was toxic and dysfunctional, yet I can't help but respect and understand why.

The event that happened around the 80% mark absolutely ripped my heart out for Kat.

In January, I restarted my figure skating lessons, and at one point, I was reading this on my Kindle before my lesson. With everyone performing on the ice, it created the most immersive experience ever.⛸️❤️‍🩹🏅

There is a lot of hype about The Favourites on bookstagram but oh my goodness is it well deserved.

Katarina and Heath are outsiders in the world of ice dancing. They’re poor, unconnected, fiery, and desperately, madly in love.

Their journey from teenagers with dreams through to competitive skating on a global scale is filled with trials, tribulations, missteps and misdeeds.

It’s a really engaging and enjoyable read that keeps you on your toes right until the very end.

This was such a fun and engaging read. The mixture of documentary transcript and first person narrative from Katarina provided a mixture of the outsiders perspectives to Kat's emotional experience. It also meant the book was quite fast to read. Katarina was deeply complex; her ambition, her drive and strength were tested in the face of her relationship and partnership with Heath. I will admit Heath was the character I was most dissapointed by, he felt like a shadow to Kat's star. It would have been nice to have gained his perspective at some point in the book, maybe the Epilogue? The other characters were well fleshed out with their own complicated relationships with Katarina and each other. This was a fun jam packed novel that kept me completely hooked.

I was lucky enough to receive this from NetGalley for an honest review. This book has it all - drama, tension, betrayal all wrapped up in the crazy world of ice dancing and the fight to the Olympics. Told in the style of a documentary we are given snippets of story told by all those involved in the couples career. Think Daisy Jone but on ice skates.

What a breeze to read, yeah it’s a bit corny and over the top but sometimes that’s exactly what you need and The Favourites delivered ! What it means for competition at all costs - how women are cold or crazy for wanting to focus and pursue a passion when they’re fighting to be noticed for their talent rather than relationships, motherhood etc.

This would be incredible as an audiobook and you can tell it would be brilliant as mini series adaptation for TV! This wouldn’t be normally a book I would reach for but it was really entertaining which was tense enough to keep the pages turning.

I didn't really think the Wuthering Heights aspects of The Favorites needed to be there considering that it was strong enough to stand on it's own. However Kat/Heath's dynamic was strong enough to carry the whole novel, even when I felt the novel was dragging a little. I will say that the twist at the end was a little out of nowhere for me and could have benefited from being better foreshadowed.

Oh wow. The Favourites was one of my most anticipated book releases of 2025 but it totally blew my expectations out of the water and there is no doubt that it's up there as one of my favourite books. I haven't felt this way since I read The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo.

I know nothing about figure skating but feel like I learnt a lot through this novel. The Favourites is told from the point of view of Katarina Shaw, who is recounting her skating career and personal life; from her childhood and meeting Heath Rocha, who would become her skating partner (and much more than that!) up to present day.

There is also a documentary being made about Katarina and Heath so we have snippets of thoughts and opinions from other skaters, judges and coaches who knew the couple at the height of their careers. I absolutely love the depth that this adds to the book and it helps build the suspense of what happened next in their lives.

I was totally enthralled by this world, the relationship between Katarina and Heath (which is not at all plain sailing) and the intensity between them but also the love for figure skating, particularly on Katarina's part, and the drama in the skating world when it gets to competitive level.

I feel like my words cannot do justice for how this book made me feel. I already want to go back and re-read it just in case I've missed something. Just incredible!

A wildly entertaining read, lies , secrets, deceptions, sabotage, sparkly costumes, a passionate love story and ice skating! I really enjoyed this novel. The world of Olympic level ice skating is unveiled , with the athletes willing to do anything to secure they are top of the podium. An enduring friendship, a love story and a willingness to sacrifice everything to secure a gold medal.
This brought me back to being enchanted by watching this sport on tv ,as a child . The drama, the talent, the headlines. I really liked the format of this book and the style of writing. It did start to feel a little repetitive around the half way mark but clawed its way back to a dazzling conclusion.
A fun read.

3,5

✨ARC review ✨

A Wuthering. Heights retelling about two ice dancers!!! OBSESSED! Wuthering heights was one of my favourite books growing up and I am really interested in ice skating, so I was very excited about this book.

The books follows two ice dancers from childhood, Kat and Heath and their journey to the Olympics. Each chapter of the book is half narrated by Kat and half told by present day interviews as part of a documentary. I’d definitely recommend to fans of Daisy Jones and the Six because the format of the book is very similar.

I loved all the characters of the book and the descriptions of the ice dances, I kept forgetting that they weren’t real and wanted to search the routines up on youtube 😭😭😭. The only negative I found in the book is about the constraints of it being a Wuthering Heights retelling. Although I adore Wuthering Heights, it left the book going down some outlandish routes that I found a bit unbelievable

WOW. I saw reviews for this saying it was like Daisy Jones and the movie I Tonya combined. I absolutely loved both of those so I had high hopes for this one, and let me tell you, it lived up to those high hopes.

I could not put this down. Every spare minute I got I was reading it. No joke, I even dreamt about it, woke up and picked it back up to finish it. The way it’s written, using interview inserts and then from Katarina’s POV was just brilliant. Whilst reading, I felt like I was watching a documentary in my head. I could visualise all the video inserts that spoke about so easily. Numerous times, I even forgot that it was fiction and tried to search the videos on Google🙃.

The characters were so well written. They felt like real people, hence my searching of Google mentioned above🤭.

Overall, this NEEDS to be adapted to the screen. This could well be my book of the year already and it’s only January. It’ll be thought to beat!

The Favourites by Layne Fargo is a fever dream, and I don't just say that because I was burning up with a sinus infection most of the time I read it. This came with a lot of buzz online, and was compared to Spinning Out and Daisy Jones and the Six, the latter of which I'm obsessed with as you know.

The book is told in part as a mockumentary format, VERY like Daisy Jones, about fictional ice dancers who feel very closely inspired by real life counterparts (or so I believe). Kat and Heath were scrappy young kids, falling in love with each other and ice skating, and Kat resolves that they will win an Olympic Gold medal despite not coming from the affluent communities that are key to unlocking that world. The reader knows at the outset that they do become world famous ice dancers, but infamous and scandalous too, making headlines for their personal lives as well as the competitions. There's lots of foreshadowing of some kind of disaster, which adds some mystery from the outset.

I presumed this wasn't for me as I don't follow any ice skating or ice dancing, and I thought I knew nothing about it until I remembered it being pitched last year as a modern Wuthering Heights retelling and I was completely allergic. You can see it isn't just the names that inspired Fargo, and it does feed into the book, but I think pushing that link was a bit much.

It is a rollercoaster with so many ups and downs that I was able to fly through it while I was sick, and I kept wanting to talk to people about it at the time. However, there's so many twists and turns that it could get repetitive, and I often got mixed up with what competition they were at, which maybe wouldn't happen as much if you were into ice dancing. It's really juicy and a great fun read, but I think it relies on that scandal to keep up momentum.

More to the point, it feels like it copies a lot of things that are popular and rides on them, but what a ride - it skillfully taps into a lot of things that are really popular and engrossing, and I kept thinking about it even when I wasn't reading it. Despite the issues I had with it, I really would still recommend it to so many people, and I think it could be huge.

a new favourite!! it's such a different blend of genres and I was hooked from the start. when reading it, it played out like a movie. every character was so well thought out, the plot was interesting and kept you wanting more and the balance between ice skating and drama was perfect. loved it!!!

I wasn’t expecting much from this book as I’m usually a fantasy reader but I heard good things about it. I have to say I throughly enjoyed it the descriptions of the ice dancing, the tumultuous relationship between Kat and Heath kept me gripped!!
Received as an arc

very entertaining read filled with drama, betrayal, tension, toxic relationships and plot twists. i loved the way the narrative was written like a documentary with a mix of interviews and television footage which made it feel like i watching a netflix show. both main characters were incredibly flawed and messy but i loved them for it. incredible storytelling about the realities of pursuing dreams, love, loss and found family. my only small issue was it was a little too long and started to drag towards the end but overall still a great read.

Okay, wow is the perfect way to start this! The Favourites by Layne Fargo is one of those books that just grabs you and doesn’t let go. Seriously, it’s a whirlwind of drama, tension, and complex characters that will keep you hooked from start to finish.

If you're a fan of Daisy Jones & The Six, this is definitely your next read. It has that same vibe of fame, rivalry, and secrets, but with a darker, more intense edge. The relationships between the characters are so layered and messy in the best way, and the way Fargo builds suspense throughout the book is just genius. I couldn't put it down.

Without giving too much away (because you need to experience it all yourself), this book explores the intricacies of friendship, ambition, and betrayal in such a unique way.

I’m calling it now—this is going to be a massive hit in 2025. It’s already my favorite read of the year (yes, I’m saying this early) and I cannot recommend it enough. Grab a copy, read it, and then shout about it from the rooftops because everyone needs to know about this book.

5/5, easily. You won’t regret it!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House UK for the ARC.

I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.....

This is my favourite kind of poolside/holiday reading: it's easy entertainment but has enough grip to keep the pages turning.

I'm a bit less sure about the use of Wuthering Heights as a model on which to build a modern storyline. The first parts follow the original quite closely with some imaginative transpositions. But then the inspiration gets left behind for a quite different trajectory and ending.

Katherine is a fantastic heroine: strong, ambitious, rule-breaking, talented. Heath just can't live up to Heathcliff and I never really believed in the passion between them.

A fun and engrossing read all the same.