The Favorites
by Layne Fargo
Contents
Overview
The Favorites follows Katarina Shaw, a ferociously ambitious ice dancer who grows up in a brutal, unstable home and believes skating is the only way out. With her partner Heath Rocha, who is also her deepest emotional bond, she claws her way from underfunded local rinks to the elite world of national and international competition. What begins as a dream of escape quickly becomes something larger and more dangerous as the pair enter Sheila Lin’s glamorous orbit and collide with her gifted children, Isabella Lin and Garrett Lin.
As Katarina rises, the novel tracks the cost of wanting greatness more than comfort. Love, rivalry, class, celebrity, and the politics of judging all shape who gets to succeed and who gets erased. The story explores how performance can blur into real life, how reinvention can be both survival and self-betrayal, and how hard it is to separate artistic partnership from obsession. At its core, the book is about what ambition gives Katarina and what it threatens to take away.
Plot Summary ⚠️ Spoilers
As teenagers, Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha are brilliant young ice dancers trapped in a violent home controlled by Katarina’s abusive brother, Lee Shaw. On the eve of their first U.S. Championships, Lee attacks them, injuring Heath and reinforcing what Katarina already knows: skating is not just a dream but her escape route. Katarina competes anyway despite a serious hip injury, and although she and Heath skate brilliantly, low artistic marks leave them in sixth place. That crushing result changes when Katarina’s idol, Sheila Lin, notices her raw power and invites both teens to a summer program at the Lin Ice Academy in Los Angeles.
Katarina seizes the invitation as a lifeline. She hides the plan from Lee, forges paperwork, sells her dead mother’s ring, and gets herself and Heath to California. At Sheila’s academy, Katarina thrives on the discipline and hierarchy, but Heath is immediately miserable and increasingly resentful of the wealth and politics around them. Katarina meets Sheila’s children, Isabella Lin and Garrett Lin. Bella first appears hostile, but Katarina eventually learns that Bella asked Sheila to invite her because she wants a true rival. Bella’s blunt ambition thrills Katarina; for the first time, she feels understood by someone who wants greatness as badly as she does.
The academy also exposes the social machinery behind skating success. Ellis Dean teaches Katarina that medals are not decided by talent alone, and Sheila’s parties make clear that judges, sponsors, and public image matter almost as much as performance. Katarina and Heath improve enough to win their first major senior title, but their rise is shadowed by money problems. Katarina discovers the inheritance she expected is gone, hides the truth from Heath, and secretly takes a modeling job with Garrett to cover expenses. When Heath sees a billboard of Katarina and Garrett together on the day of the World Championships, simmering jealousy explodes. Their fight ruins their focus, and afterward Bella proposes a shocking solution: now that she plans to stop skating with Garrett, Katarina should become Garrett’s new partner.
Katarina hesitates, but Heath overhears her admit she cannot become a champion with him. He disappears, leaving her devastated. After illness and grief, Katarina eventually accepts Garrett as her partner. Together they become a formidable team and win world titles, but success never frees Katarina from Heath’s hold. When Heath suddenly reappears years later, transformed into a far stronger skater and Bella’s new partner, old wounds become open warfare. Katarina is drawn into a bitter rivalry with Bella and a painful reeducation in what Heath became without her. During this period, Garrett becomes Katarina’s closest ally; when she discovers he is secretly involved with Ellis and hiding his sexuality, their partnership shifts from romance rumors into genuine trust.
Katarina’s drive with Garrett peaks as they chase the 2006 Olympics, but her obsession and rivalry with Heath help wreck that dream. She crashes in the warm-up at Nationals, insists on skating despite a possible concussion, and ends up badly injured in the hospital. Heath, not Garrett, stays beside her. He takes her back to their old lake house, where the intimacy they lost returns. Bella and Garrett later bring news of how the public has turned Katarina and Heath into a tragic love story, and Katarina realizes that safety with Heath is not enough; she still wants skating. She asks Heath to return to competition with her.
Their comeback is messy. Back under Sheila’s broad influence, Katarina and Heath deal with paparazzi, Lee’s public attacks, and programs that do not feel like their own. A warning from Veronika Volkova helps Katarina see that Sheila may be manipulating both publicity and careers to protect her own children’s legacy. Katarina and Heath eventually break from Sheila, build a more independent team, and rise fast, winning major events and reclaiming their place at the top. But the partnership is never simple. Heath’s public proposal after they win Nationals in Cleveland leaves Katarina feeling trapped rather than celebrated, and fame turns their romance into a performance. Lee’s reappearance at a gala, followed later by his death from an overdose, reopens family trauma neither of them can face honestly.
At the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Katarina and Heath lead early, but their private life collapses under the strain. A disastrous interview about marriage and children triggers a fight about whether Katarina loves Heath or only needs him for skating. Just before the free dance, Bella shows Katarina an article revealing Heath’s secret years in Moscow after he left her: he trained with the Volkovas, pursued Russian citizenship, and kept that entire history hidden. Katarina and Heath skate their Olympic final in mutual rage, turning the performance into a public disaster and falling to bronze. The collapse shatters whatever trust remains. Katarina later finds Heath in bed with Bella, then confronts Sheila and learns an even uglier truth: after Nagano, Sheila deliberately sent Heath to Veronika, hoping to remove him from Katarina’s life and control the top teams around her children. Sickened by Sheila and by how much of herself she sees in Sheila’s ambition, Katarina disappears from elite skating.
Years later, Sheila dies, and her funeral draws Katarina back into that world. Bella, now more reflective and less combative, seeks her out and eventually proposes an improbable idea: a comeback with Heath for the Sochi Olympics. Bella explains that her own bond with Heath was born from loneliness and damage, not lasting romance, and Katarina slowly allows herself to reunite with him. Their first practice proves their connection is still extraordinary. They agree to try again while keeping strict professional boundaries, though those boundaries prove fragile almost immediately.
The comeback is beset by danger. At Rostelecom Cup in Moscow, Heath falls after hitting a sequin on the ice, and Katarina becomes convinced someone is sabotaging them. Bella, now coaching them, later collapses at Nationals; in the hospital, Katarina learns Bella is pregnant and Heath is the father. The revelation reshapes the triangle without destroying it. Bella, seriously ill with preeclampsia, insists Katarina and Heath go to Sochi after they are unexpectedly named to the Olympic team.
In Sochi, the sabotage escalates. Katarina receives blood-filled funeral roses, her skate is tampered with, and their hotel room is staged with blood and her ruined costume. Ellis Dean unexpectedly helps by giving them a safer room. Heath finally tells Katarina that Veronika did not give him the scars on his back; Dmitri Kipriyanov did, after Heath defended Yelena Volkova from Dmitri’s abuse. Yelena then sends Katarina a replacement costume, revealing that not everyone in the Russian camp is an enemy. Katarina comes to suspect Francesca Gaskell and Dmitri have gone further by replacing Heath’s pain medication with a banned substance, setting a trap that could ruin them whether they win or not. Even knowing that, Katarina and Heath choose to skate.
Their final Olympic free dance is the best expression of who they have ever been together: tender, violent, forgiving, and inseparable. Katarina kisses Heath when they finish, but the triumph lasts only seconds. Heath collapses on the ice coughing blood. Later, the IOC strips them of the gold after finding an unidentified banned designer drug in Heath’s system and refusing to accept sabotage as a defense. Katarina denounces the process but ultimately chooses not to keep chasing official vindication. What matters to her is that they know what they did on the ice.
Years afterward, Katarina has built a quieter life coaching at Bella’s rink. Garrett has left competitive skating and found a healthier path, Heath lives with lasting physical damage, and Bella and Heath are raising Bella’s daughter with Katarina woven into their daily lives. Katarina never got to keep Olympic gold, but she comes to see that the life she built after the spectacle—the people she loves, the work she still believes in, and the self she no longer has to perform—is its own kind of victory.
Characters
- Katarina ShawA fiercely ambitious ice dancer who sees skating as both her first love and her only path out of violence, poverty, and powerlessness. The novel follows her from a dangerous adolescence into elite competition, where her drive for greatness shapes every bond she forms and nearly destroys her. Her arc centers on the cost of ambition, the blur between performance and truth, and the life she builds after public triumph turns into scandal.
- Heath RochaKatarina’s longtime skating partner, first love, and emotional anchor, whose bond with her powers their greatest performances and their worst implosions. He grows from a vulnerable, undertrained boy into a world-class skater shaped by abandonment, secrecy, and the need to be enough for Katarina. His disappearances, return, and hidden past drive many of the book’s deepest betrayals and reconciliations.
- Isabella LinUsually called Bella, she is Sheila Lin’s daughter, Katarina’s fiercest rival, and one of the few people who truly understands Katarina’s hunger to win. Their relationship shifts repeatedly between competition, friendship, betrayal, and alliance, making Bella central to both Katarina’s rise and her reinvention after disaster. Later, Bella becomes a crucial coach and part of the unconventional family that survives the fallout of elite skating.
- Garrett LinBella’s twin brother and an exceptionally steady, gifted ice dancer who becomes Katarina’s partner after Heath leaves. Skating with Garrett brings Katarina major success, but their partnership is defined less by romance than by trust, honesty, and the different kind of balance he offers her on and off the ice. His own hidden life and later departure from competition broaden the novel’s view of what survival beyond sport can look like.
- Sheila LinA legendary champion and elite coach whose attention first seems to offer Katarina everything she has dreamed of. As the story unfolds, Sheila becomes the embodiment of skating’s glamour, cruelty, and political manipulation, shaping careers while treating people as tools in a larger legacy project. Her influence reaches across Katarina’s entire life, from her first real opportunity to the deepest revelations of betrayal.
- Lee ShawKatarina’s abusive older brother and early guardian, whose violence makes skating feel like escape rather than mere ambition. Even after Katarina leaves home, Lee’s control, financial damage, public accusations, and eventual death continue to shape her fear, rage, and distrust. He represents the life Katarina is trying to outrun and the trauma she never fully leaves behind.
- Ellis DeanA fellow skater turned media provocateur who moves through the story as rival, instigator, gossip broker, and occasional unexpected ally. Ellis understands the sport’s appetite for spectacle and repeatedly pushes Katarina toward painful truths, sometimes cruelly and sometimes with real care. His role highlights how public narrative can wound skaters as deeply as competition itself.
- NicoleKatarina and Heath’s early coach, who supports their talent despite limited resources and helps get them to the threshold of national competition. She anchors the pair’s underdog beginnings and contrasts sharply with the wealth, polish, and politics of the elite system they later enter.
- Veronika VolkovaA formidable Russian coach and Sheila Lin’s longtime rival, associated with intimidation, discipline, and power in international skating. Her connection to Heath’s vanished years in Moscow makes her a haunting figure in Katarina’s understanding of his transformation. She also functions as a dark mirror to Sheila, exposing how the sport rewards ruthless control.
- Yelena VolkovaA leading Russian ice dancer who begins as one of Katarina’s great international rivals. As Heath’s hidden past comes into focus, Yelena emerges as more complex than Katarina assumed, linked to his time in Moscow and capable of kindness even within a hostile system. Her late act of help in Sochi complicates the book’s rivalry lines at a crucial moment.
- Dmitri KipriyanovYelena’s partner, a violent and intimidating skater whose cruelty extends beyond competition. He is revealed to be responsible for Heath’s scars and becomes tied to the atmosphere of menace and sabotage surrounding Katarina and Heath’s final Olympic run.
- Francesca GaskellAn ambitious younger American rival who rises during Katarina and Heath’s later comeback years. Her confidence, access, and late connection to Dmitri place her near the center of Katarina’s suspicions about the sabotage in Sochi, making her a newer version of the ruthless competitive hunger Katarina recognizes in herself.
- Lena MullerThe blunt coach who works with Katarina and Heath during the Vancouver Olympic period. Lena is less emotionally entangled than Sheila, but her practical focus and harsh honesty underscore how fragile the pair’s comeback is once their private crises begin overtaking their skating.
- Kirk LockwoodSheila Lin’s former skating partner and a famous figure in the sport whose legacy helps define the standard Katarina grows up worshipping. As commentator, public personality, and mourner at Sheila’s funeral, he helps connect the mythology of skating’s past to the story’s present-day media spectacle.
Themes
Layne Fargo’s The Favorites is ultimately a novel about what it costs to want something absolutely. Katarina’s ambition is not a simple dream of success; from the opening chapters, skating is her imagined escape from Lee’s violence, poverty, and confinement. That urgency shapes nearly every major choice she makes, from skating through injury at Nationals to sacrificing her mother’s ring for Los Angeles, and later to repeatedly choosing competition over safety, rest, or emotional clarity. The book asks whether greatness is noble, destructive, or both.
A second major theme is the tension between performance and authenticity. Ice dance is an art built on selling feeling, and Katarina and Heath become famous precisely because their chemistry reads as real. But Fargo keeps showing how unstable that boundary is. Their romance feeds their skating, then their skating starts to consume their romance: public kisses, proposal spectacle, media narratives, and even Olympic programs turn intimacy into choreography. Again and again, the novel asks whether Katarina and Heath are expressing love or performing the version of love the world rewards.
- Love as devotion and damage: Heath is Katarina’s refuge from childhood, the person who literally saves her life on the lake and carries her through injury and crisis. Yet their bond also becomes possessive, jealous, and limiting, especially once Katarina’s hunger for more outgrows Heath’s simpler desire to stay together. Their relationship is both sanctuary and wound.
- Power, class, and access: The contrast between Katarina’s Illinois upbringing and the Lins’ elite world makes clear that talent alone never determines success. Parties, judges, sponsors, gossip, and family money matter as much as technical skill. Katarina learns this at Sheila’s mansion and keeps relearning it through scandals, press manipulation, and Olympic politics.
- Reinvention: Nearly every central figure invents a self—Sheila erases her origins, Heath remakes himself in Russia, Katarina tries to become the next Sheila, and even Bella eventually recasts herself as coach rather than champion. Reinvention offers freedom, but the novel also shows its loneliness and moral cost.
What gives the book its emotional force is that it does not end by simply condemning ambition. Instead, it suggests that survival lies in redefining victory. By the epilogue, Katarina has lost the official gold she chased for years, yet she gains something sturdier: work she loves, hard-earned self-knowledge, and a messy but genuine chosen family built beyond the spectacle.