A review by jessrock
Fight + Flight by Jules Machias

emotional hopeful informative reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I appreciated what this book was doing but it felt way too “a very special episode” to really work for me. It’s about a budding friendship-or-maybe-more between a girl learning to live with her physical disability and a girl struggling with panic attacks, and their friendship with a Minecraft-obsessed Black biracial boy at what I assume was a mostly white middle school. They have a terrifying experience involving an active shooter situation at school and are each trying to process it in their own ways while coming to terms with the fact that their lived experiences of the same event were wildly different. I liked the characters but am too far removed from middle school myself to know if this book would feel as heavyhanded to a tween as it did to me.