67 pages • 2 hours read
Layne FargoThe Favorites
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2025A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Wuthering Heights in the World of Ice Dancing
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 
