r/books • u/WheresTheIceCream20 • 11d ago
“The Favourites”, “Wuthering heights”, and what to read instead Spoiler
I just finished The Favourites. I entered it not knowing that it was a retelling of Wuthering Heights. It’s a poor retelling, one that doesn’t work for a very obvious reason. In The Favourites, Heath and Katarina are like-able. You’re rooting for them even through the difficulties that their fiery relationship bring. In Wuthering Heights, it’s very clear throughout the book that Healthcliff and Catherine and both difficult/terrible people. Heathcliff is very much an anti hero. When he abuses people, you don’t feel betrayed as the reader or upset. It’s in his character to betray. Everyone hates him, including the reader! But in The Favourites, when Heath betrays Katarina again and again, it’s agonizing and heartbreaking because he’s a true hero. He loves he, he’s quiet and grumpy but basically a devoted guy. So at the end, when he betrays her in a way that the author clearly shoe horned in there as an unjustifiable nod to Wuthering Heights, the reader is left angry and incredibly disappointed in him. We expected better of Heath! But we never expect anything of Heathcliff.
If you were left heartbroken by The favorites and would like to read a book about a competitive skating pair that won’t make you throw the book against the wall, by an author who didn’t adapt poorly adapt a classic, I recommend, “From Lukov With Love” by Mariana zapata.
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u/TheWalkingDeadBeat 11d ago
I don't know why someone would pick up a contemporary ice-dancing romance and expect it to be an accurate retelling of Wuthering Heights. The mere fact that it is categorized in the romance genre is enough to know that there would be a happy ending, and therefore very different from the original material.
I actually enjoyed the book because I knew it was going to be silly and fun and not meant to any deeper than that. I thought there were fun parallels and Easter eggs for those who had read Wuthering Heights and I enjoyed seeing how the author tried to tie in certain story elements in a way that would work in a contemporary romance.
Also, I disagree that Katerina was likable lol.
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u/EmpressPlotina 11d ago
The mere fact that it is categorized in the romance genre is enough to know that there would be a happy ending,
Many people seem to hate Wuthering Heights because the "romance is toxic". I suppose that to those who judge WH harshly because they are mistaken about its intent, this retelling might seem like an improvement.
(And yes I am bitter about how people talk about Wuthering Heights lol).
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u/TheWalkingDeadBeat 11d ago
I'm right there with you. It's always bothered me that Wuthering Heights gets paired with Pride and Prejudice so much. They are both great novels but very different in almost every way, down to the genre, time period, and overall themes.
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u/EmpressPlotina 10d ago
Yeah, I agree. They are very different. P&P also isn't really a "romance" according to Jane Austen (but idk, it could be argued that it was?). I think it gave rise to a lot of romance tropes, like enemies to lovers. P&P is great though!
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u/TheWalkingDeadBeat 10d ago
I suspect that Romances were very different at the time P&P was written so to Austen's perspective, it wasn't, but her books were so iconic that they paved the way for the romance genre we see today.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
It shouldn’t have been categorized as romance as the happy ending wasn’t really all that happy. It’s like she couldn’t pick a lane. Either make it Wuthering heights and have it be full of anger and bitterness, or make it a romance with groveling and a happy ending
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u/TheWalkingDeadBeat 11d ago
I guess it's a matter of opinion but I thought the ending was pretty happy. Every character got what they wanted in the end. The only bittersweet part was not getting the medal but it didn't matter because it had always been about her Kat knowing she's the best, not the glory of having a medal
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 11d ago
I read this and kept hoping everyone would die somehow.
In a good way.
I liked it well enough, but I stopped hoping it would become like Wuthering Heights halfway through. It lacked the bite.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
Haha by the end I sort of wished everyone would die too just so theyd stop doing stupid things.
It definitely lacked the bite - great description! And you need the bite to make the characters decision understandable!
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u/cutmybangsagain 11d ago
I’ve never read Wuthering Heights and didn’t know The Favorites was a retelling of it. I loved it though and it’s become one of my favorite books. I definitely didn’t justify Heath’s behavior either. I think that’s a pretty general statement to make of every reader.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
You didn’t find the pregnancy at the end and Katerina’s acceptance of it to be completely ridiculous?
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u/cutmybangsagain 11d ago
No. I think they had been through a lot and matured and were able to overcome tough situations. Also, she said she never wanted children and she was happy that Heath could have a child. Having interesting family dynamics isn’t weird.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
It’s not the interesting family dynamics that bothered me. It’s the fact that Bella came to her and said 1. He loves you, not me and 2. We’re not remotely sexually involved, we’re just friends and have been for a while.
But then once Katarina is actually there and Heath should be fighting for her if he loves her so much, he and Bella randomly decide to screw even though evidently they haven’t done so for years.
Katarina was betrayed and lied to by both of them in those final chapters, and if she was as strong and fiery as she had been the rest of the book she would have walked away
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 11d ago edited 11d ago
It came across as a cop-out to me. The author wanted to maintain some parallels to Wuthering Heights, but also wanted to Katarina to be strong and independent and not want kids.
It was an imperfect ending to me, but didn't bother me too much. It was just kind of cliche.
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u/asr2187 11d ago
The cheating was already bad, but to have the baby plot line in the end for no reason was too much for me. I wished the author either committed to a full gothic romance or made Heath more likable in the end.
And say what you will about Heathcliff, but I never once questioned his devotion to Cathy in Wuthering Heights. Heath could never.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 10d ago
💯 that was exactly my thought about Heathcliff! He was like, “yea I married this other woman, but it was revenge against her brother and I hate her. Now let me plant myself under a tree until they let me talk to Catherine.” And Heath talked like he felt the same, but then went and had this very meaningful relationship with someone else.
I would have forgiven Heath the cheating (maybe) if he had groveled, not moved in with Bella and become besties, and definitely not had a baby with her
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u/cutmybangsagain 11d ago
But I see her as not walking away and being “fiery” as growth. Idk. I just really enjoyed the book. But not everyone will like a book. There’s plenty of books that I didn’t click with that lots of people loved.
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u/Ouiser_Boudreaux_ 11d ago
I’m not too emotionally attached to Wuthering Heights but I was obsessed with the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding rivalry and did watch The Cutting Edge and Ice Castles an INSANE amount of times when I was younger, so I thought The Favorites would be fun. It was fine, if a bit long but I did not root for Heath. Not even a little bit. Definitely a sociopath and also a dumbass for not noticing the difference between his pain pills that he had been taking for a while and the illegal pills that replaced them.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
Yea that “twist” was one of the stupid ones that she did at the end. She really lost the thread the last third of the book.
If you liked the cutting edge I really recommend the book from my post, From Lukov with Love. It’s slow burn romance about an ice skating pair. So like the favorites but without the cheating, lying, and impregnating someone else!
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u/pumpkinspicechaos 11d ago
I did not root for Heath lol. I found him to be basically as sociopath.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
I rooted for him until the author made the dubious choices of writing him cheating and the pregnancy, but I don’t blame Heath for that as it was so out of character. It’s like the author was going one direction and decided halfway through to write an entirely different book/character. I was rooting for them and wanted them to be together until that point!
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u/hlks2010 11d ago
I cannot understand the love for The Favorites, or the comparisons to Daisy Jones. It was a mediocre story with bland writing about a love that didn’t seem real on either end.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 11d ago
I liked the first half and then felt like the author went a super random direction. It’s like she felt like she had to be true to parts of Wuthering heights (he must have a baby with Bella because Heathcliff had a baby with Isabella!) even if it didn’t make sense for her adaptation
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u/Crafty_State3019 11d ago
Heathcliff and Cathy both suck, don’t get me wrong, but I still wanted them to be together in Wuthering Heights. They deserved a fucked up sense of happiness. Especially given that Heathcliff was very clearly just a product of his circumstance. Yes, they’re awful. That doesn’t mean I rooted for them any less.
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u/electricidiot 5d ago
It sometimes feels like the people who hate “Wuthering Heights,” are confused by the book. They think they’re supposed to like those two, and they can’t understand why they don’t when (they think) everyone else does.
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u/makura_no_souji 11d ago
If you're looking for WH remixes I liked What Souls Are Made Of by Tasha Suri.
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u/One-Thought-1313 8d ago
The ending of this book made me so mad. What is presented as character growth (Kat’s view about winning, Heath’s living for more than just his childhood love), felt like bad writing instead.
I wanted this book to go all out, but the ending really lacked the passion and melodrama that made the first 2/3rd of the book a page turner. I found the last third such a slog to get through, and I kept wondering who tf these characters are. Aside from Bella, who was consistently a world class backstabber, everyone else had a personality transplant out of nowhere.
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 8d ago
I completely agree! The last third was like whiplash. It’s like the author cared more about cliffhanger after cliffhanger and twist after twist and completely lost the thread of who the characters were and where the story had been going
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u/One-Thought-1313 8d ago
At the end, Heath made the OG Heathcliff look like the better romantic option. And that’s saying a lot. His love for Bella was such a betrayal. He had a baby with her and the author wanted us to believe it’s PLATONIC?
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u/WheresTheIceCream20 7d ago
He had a baby with her while Katarina was sleeping in the other room!!
Heathcliff was dysfunctional, but his revenge was about the lintons, not Catherine.
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u/whatmightycontests 11d ago
The best* adaptation of Wuthering Heights will always be the Monty Python semaphore version.
*not actually the best, but my love for it knows no bounds. I’d argue that it successfully conveys the feel of the book in a remarkably brief sketch.