The Favorites
Layne Fargo, 2025
A fictional oral history of two ice dancers whose obsessive partnership becomes a legend—and a scandal—told by the people who watched them burn.
Feels like passion, longing and unease. About love, ambition and art.
A page from the book
Two teenagers carve their names as if the future were furniture.
Shaw & Rocha, the carving read when he finished. It was the way our names would be written on the scoreboard at our first U.S. Figure Skating Championships in a few days’ time. The way they’d be announced in medal ceremonies and reported in newspapers and entered in the record books. We’d cut the letters into the center of my antique rosewood headboard, deep enough that no amount of sanding could remove them. Layne Fargo.Fargo structures the novel as an oral history—interview transcripts, archival footage and quoted memories—so the reader meets the couple through other people.
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Favorites like?
- Feels like passion, longing and unease. About love, ambition and art.
- What should I read after The Favorites?
- If you liked The Favorites, try Quicksilver (Callie Hart), Not in Love (Ali Hazelwood) and A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire (Jennifer L. Armentrout).
A taste of the feed
What you call a woman decides how much room she is allowed.
Don’t call her Sunshine,” he commanded. “Why not?” If Carrion’s plan was to poke the bear, then he sure as hell knew how to go about it. But Kingfisher didn’t respond to the taunting note in his question. He just cocked his head a little, nostrils flaring, and spoke in a low rumble. “Because she is moonlight. The mist that shrouds the mountains. The bite of electricity in the air before a storm. The smoke that rolls across a battlefield before the killing starts. You have no idea what she is. What she could be. You should call her Majesty.
Quicksilver · Callie Hart
How it feels to be seen as someone’s exact dream.
I’d never felt more beautiful than when he looked at me. Like I was the final prototype of someone’s entire fantasy life.
Not in Love · Ali Hazelwood
Desire that arrives as need, not want.
I need to feel your lips on mine.“ He planted his hands on the carriage wall, caging me in. ”I need to feel your breath in my lungs. I need to feel your life inside me. I just need you. It’s an ache. This need. Can I have you? All of you?
A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire · Jennifer L. Armentrout
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