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A review by gabriele_queerbookdom
Fight + Flight by Jules Machias
3.0
DRC provided by Quill Tree Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Representation: pansexual disabled white protagonist with hEDS, queer white protagonist, lesbian trans white secondary character, Black secondary character with ADHD, bisexual white tertiary character, Pakistani-English tertiary character, gay white tertiary character, tertiary character of colour.
Content Warning: anxiety, panic attacks, trauma, bullying, mentions of death, racism, transphobia.
Fight + Flight by Jules Machias is a dual point-of-view middle-grade contemporary novel about fear and the ways to confront it, living in the present, about living with anxiety and living with chronic pains, and the traumas active shooter drills cause.
Avery is a bubbly middle-grade student, an energetic tornado inhabiting a body with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. She is recovering from shoulder surgery when her school decides to do an active shooter drill which traumatise the whole student body and even some of the faculty. What happens during the drill leads Avery through a dangerous path as she plans to take matters in her own hands and prank the headmaster.
Sarah is the total opposite of Avery. She is shy and anxiety-ridden. After her aunt’s passing and the departure of her best-friend and cousin, she wants to make another friend and thinks Avery might be a good candidate. The girls start to bond after the drill, helping each other seeing issues from a different perspective and spurring each other to ask for what they need.
I liked this book. I liked reading the experience of a young girl starting to cope with hEDS and I liked her emotional development both in regards to her own condition and the way she relates to others. I preferred Sarah’s chapters to Avery’s though. Probably because they were written in the form of journal entries and there were lots of delightful artworks in-between the written parts and that really helped me to remain focused more than I normally am.
Representation: pansexual disabled white protagonist with hEDS, queer white protagonist, lesbian trans white secondary character, Black secondary character with ADHD, bisexual white tertiary character, Pakistani-English tertiary character, gay white tertiary character, tertiary character of colour.
Content Warning: anxiety, panic attacks, trauma, bullying, mentions of death, racism, transphobia.
Fight + Flight by Jules Machias is a dual point-of-view middle-grade contemporary novel about fear and the ways to confront it, living in the present, about living with anxiety and living with chronic pains, and the traumas active shooter drills cause.
Avery is a bubbly middle-grade student, an energetic tornado inhabiting a body with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. She is recovering from shoulder surgery when her school decides to do an active shooter drill which traumatise the whole student body and even some of the faculty. What happens during the drill leads Avery through a dangerous path as she plans to take matters in her own hands and prank the headmaster.
Sarah is the total opposite of Avery. She is shy and anxiety-ridden. After her aunt’s passing and the departure of her best-friend and cousin, she wants to make another friend and thinks Avery might be a good candidate. The girls start to bond after the drill, helping each other seeing issues from a different perspective and spurring each other to ask for what they need.
I liked this book. I liked reading the experience of a young girl starting to cope with hEDS and I liked her emotional development both in regards to her own condition and the way she relates to others. I preferred Sarah’s chapters to Avery’s though. Probably because they were written in the form of journal entries and there were lots of delightful artworks in-between the written parts and that really helped me to remain focused more than I normally am.