Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Cutting Edge and Daisy Jones with edge

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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Bingo: Play (for the sports angle since ice dancing, though everyone is very serious about it) (Bingo #6, 2nd row complete) This novel came on my radar last year on one of those anticipated novels of 2025 because of the description, and I checked out the author’s They Never Learn as a result while waiting for this one – I liked that one quite a bit but didn’t love it. Finally picked this one up – if you love The Cutting Edge, Daisy Jones and […]

Careening over the cliff, crashing into the ocean, and exploding on impact.

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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They didn’t simply want us to be lovers. They wanted us to be so in love, we’d burn the whole world down to be together. ― Layne fargo, The Favorites I have a backlog of reviews to write, but it took a truly bonkers story to yank me out of my holding pattern, tear open my window, and scream into the void. The Favorites is that story. This book has everything. Buckets of blood? Check. Violently gory injuries with ice skates? Check. Skating partners who […]

Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights….

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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Layne Fargo with The Favorites is trying to do what Barbara Kingsolver did with Demon Copperhead: take a literary classic and update it for a 21st-century audience. Some readers dislike Demon Copperhead for what they see as its forays into trauma porn and its sadistic treatment of the main character. For the record, I love DC. But no matter what you think of Kingsolver’s novel, it’s a work of genius compared to The Favorites. Admittedly, the scope is a bit different. While Demon Copperhead uses Dickens’ David Copperfield as a framework to explore the […]

“Katarina Shaw was in the building, and she had come to win.”

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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Confession 1: I have rewritten the quote used for the title of this review.  The actual line from the book is “Katarina Shaw was in the building, and that bitch had come to win.” but I didn’t want to swear in the title of a review.  Katarina (Kat) Shaw and Heath Rocha are ice dancers with Olympic aspirations, while they have talent they don’t exactly have much support (emotionally or financially) from the people in their lives.  Kat’s mother died when she was six, and […]

Justice, rage, vengeance

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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I remember when I originally saw the trailer for Promising Young Woman – from that first teaser, it looked like something in the spirit of Hard Candy except that the protagonist was now an adult and punishing men for transgressions. And then I saw a spoiler thread of “this movie is not what you think” and after reading the actual plot, immediately lost interest. I still haven’t seen it or Saltburn. This book, on the other hand, is exactly what I wanted that movie to […]

A Feminist serial killer romp

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

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Some people are offended by the idea of a woman taking the law into her own hands and murdering rapists. I am not one of those people, especially in this nearly Handmaid’s Tale existence we’re currently living in. Sorry not sorry. Our main characters are Scarlett Clark and Carly Schiller. One is the aforementioned murderess (and English professor), and the other is a kinda scared college student. We travel between these two ladies stories throughout the book. They both are associated with Gorman University. That’s […]



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