The Favorites

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Set in the world of ice dancing, The Favorites appears to be a fairly contemporary tale at first glance: It features ambition, competition, and passion, following the ice-dancing pair Kat and Heath, whose tumultuous relationship is intertwined with their explosive career. However, on second look, numerous elements of the book hearken to Wuthering Heights (1847), a literary classic by Emily Brontë. Layne Fargo, known for her contemporary thrillers, confesses that this novel is essentially a retelling of Brontë’s classic tale, updated and set in the world of ice dance. Fargo is a fan of both ice dancing and the gothic romance genre, of which Wuthering Heights is a seminal entry, and what began as two separate books eventually culminated in a single story (Longeretta, Emily. “‘The Favorites’ Author Layne Fargo on Which Olympians Inspired Her Characters, Whether She’d Write a Sequel and Being Optioned for TV.” Variety, 21 Jan. 2025).

The similarities between Fargo’s contemporary tale and Brontë’s classic are numerous. For example, the characters inspired by Wuthering Heights are easily identified: In The Favorites, Brontë’s heroine, Catherine Earnshaw, becomes Katarina “Kat” Shaw; her orphaned companion and eventual lover, Heathcliff, becomes Heath Rocha; Catherine’s abusive older brother, Hindley, is transformed into Kat’s brother, Lee; and Edgar Linton and his sister, Isabella, the Earnshaws’ neighbors, emerge as Garrett and Isabella “Bella” Lin. Fargo also borrows numerous details from Wuthering Heights to flesh out the plot of The Favorites. For instance, Lee took over the Shaw household after his and Kat’s father’s death, just as Hindley does in Brontë’s classic. Similarly, like Heathcliff, Heath disappears for three years after overhearing and misunderstanding Kat’s feelings about him, while, like Catherine and Edgar, Kat and Garret pair up in his absence. Even Fargo’s narrative choices are inspired by how the story unfolds in the classic: In Wuthering Heights, Ellen “Nelly” Dean, the housekeeper, tells Mr. Lockwood, a visiting guest, the story of Heathcliff and Catherine. This narrative structure is mirrored in The Favorites, with Ellis Dean and Kirk Lockwood featuring heavily in the documentary-style narrative of the book.

Despite the numerous similarities between the two books, Fargo’s rendition is also decidedly different. While Heathcliff is centered in Brontë’s work, in The Favorites, the lens shifts to focus on the women in the novel. With this shift, Fargo also recenters the story from a tale of revenge to a focus on the ambition and competition that drive the female characters in the book. Kat, Bella, Sheila, and even Francesca are driven by the desire to win; any hurtful or questionable decisions they make along the way are in service to this end. With this shift, a positive driving force propels the story, rather than a negative, retaliatory one, although the narrative retains some moments of negativity, retaliation, and destruction. Nevertheless, Kat’s motivation of success rather than revenge is a significant change from Brontë’s text, as it defines the trajectory of her personal journey and the experiences of other characters. Kat’s attitude allows her to learn from her experiences and heal and reconcile the relationships in her life, with the book ending on a positive note, despite its bittersweet ending. This optimistic ending is the greatest shift from Brontë’s book, in which the characters are caught up in an intergenerational cycle of revenge and hatred, only finding peace after their deaths. For Kat, Bella, and Heath, however, the resolution lies in being able to spend the rest of their lives with each other.