Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

I enjoyed this book far more than I expected. Machias depicts mental and physical health struggles far better than almost any other book I have ever read and certainly better than any middle grade book. (It likely helps that they also suffer from the physical disability and general anxiety described in the book.) Machias also creates distinct voices for each of the protagonists which is also aided by having two narrators for the audiobook. Each character reads like real eighth graders and grow in believable, realistic ways. I also appreciate the fact that even though Machias filled the narrative with a number of issues, they avoided sounding preachy.

This is heavy for a middle grade and I'd definitely recommend it for older middle grade. That being said I think that it would be remiss and irresponsible to make the claim that kids are not familiar enough with these topics to handle a story about them. They are living it every single day.

This book is about two middle school girls, one who is a daredevil and who is constantly looking for the next big adventure. She is queer and comfortable in her queerness (which is amazing). She has queer parents, two moms one of which is trans which is extra fun representation. She also has EDS. EDS is a condition which basically means that it's really easy to hurt yourself and tear ligaments and muscles and break bones etc. Avery has just hurt her shoulder and a dirt bike incident that she was not supposed to be riding dirt bike and the story follows her recovery for her shoulder will also dealing with chronic pain and additional pain from EDS

Then there is Sarah. Sarah is from a very religious conservative family and she has pretty severe anxiety and panic attacks. After being told to just pray her panic away, she becomes kind of persistent on finding a way to help herself since no one is willing to help her.

When a school shooting drill gets a little too real, Both girls have some realizations about their own behavior and how they can move forward.

Some of the heavier themes discussed are school shootings, racism, ableism, homophobia, queerness and religion, etc.

Sarah and Avery end up kind of teaming up to get back at the principal for tricking them with the school shooting drill and Sarah ends up realizing that maybe she's got some feelings for Avery that go beyond friendship and Avery has to figure out how to prioritize a crush with her friendships and her idea of justice.

It is a lot but I think it is really well done It's a fantastic book and I would definitely recommend.

First, this cover is absolutely amazing! I love the illustrated style mixed with the vivid colors. Within the story I loved getting the opportunity to learn about hEDS, something I had never heard of but I feel I have only just begun to learn about!

Unfortunately, I was unable to read and review this book. I did not agree with all the themes in it, and I felt as if I was unable to truly enjoy it. I wanted to give someone else an opportunity to give it the review it deserved.

On the one hand, I like how both girls in this book are portrayed. They are clearly defined and well developed. We see the difference between their superficial traits and their true selves. There's underlying complexity both to the characters and the plot. I feel like some of the secondary characters are a bit too cookie cutter. And the agenda is awfully heavy handed.

dnf, i keep hoping i will like a book by this author but it has not happened yet. there is really no reason for a contemporary story to be this long. i will try again with their next book.

First and foremost, the EDS representation in this book is both excellent and needed. It is under diagnosed and unrecognized in general, much less in the world of literature. We need more books that deal with the reality of dealing with a new chronic health diagnosis and what daily life is like. This book does this really well, while not losing sight of the many other aspects of teen life that every teen is juggling. I did prefer that perspective over the other one, and the flipping of perspectives worked less for me in this book than others. There's a lot happening in this book, so it's good for teens who want to feel a lot of feelings and see the reflections of their lives.

This was a solid middle grade that I absolutely devoured! I love the way this author integrates art into their books and I loved the way this book grapples with complicated feelings around disability and religion and queerness and mental health. The two girls here are total opposites and yet they find their way to each other and steal the reader's hearts.

I will say that although I loved it overall, I struggled with the age range of this book: at times, the main characters act really immature (especially Sarah) despite being two weeks away from being high schoolers. But at other moments, it seems to be assumed the reader is a teen (many references to Stranger Things which is TV-14...). It made me a little confused about who the audience is. I read the characters more as 6th graders rather than 8th. Still, if you can get past that, it's a great story!

The main character has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It has a ton going on in it with gay moms (one trans), a gay main character, her crush and her brother are gay, and the parents of the other girl are very Catholic, and the major premise is that the school did a drill where the hired actors to act out a school shooting (without warning) and it traumatized the kids and teachers. The kids plot revenge, especially the girl with EDS who was seriously injured trying to take cover. It did what I thought was a good job explaining what EDS is like.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC of Fight + Flight by Jules Machias. Avery and Sarah are two very different girls who become over a shared traumatic experience. Avery, is a thrill seeker who happens to have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disease that affects her joints and causes her to get injured easily. Sarah has panic attacks that she tries to manage through her art. One day at school, the principal decides to conduct a realistic-sounding active shooter drill and both girls are not quite the same after that. This book was wonderful at providing insight into what life is like with anxiety. A definite must read.

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.

Thank you, Quill Tree Books, for allowing me to read Fight and Flight early.

I want to shout out once again that it's so important to have these kinds of books for middle grade kids. Although I didn't connect to the story as much as I wanted to, I can see the importance of this story. The mental health rep was really wel done!

E-arc provided by Netgalley

I really loved this (more than this author's first book). It had a unique premise and while some of the arguments/issues characters had with each other were a little dumb to me i still found it an enjoyable read!

This was a really interesting book! I loved the plot and the way we got to see the different views of the characters. It was such a sweet read and I really enjoyed it.

jules machias' last novel, 'both can be true'' was not very good, in my opinion, but i wanted to give them another chance. now i can say with full certainty that their writing style is perhaps just a bit too juvenile for me, but not terrible by any means. this was definitely case of, 'its not you, its me!'

I really wanted to like this more than I did. To put things in perspective, this book probably isn't one that I would have picked up on my own based on its premise, except for the fact that one of the main characters has hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which I have as well. My experience has been pretty different from Avery's - I wasn't diagnosed until college and my dislocations are less frequent, for starters - but it was still so cool to see something like that on page, and there were passages I found myself nodding along with. Hopefully this book's existence helps more people become aware of EDS.

I also thought that the dual perspectives were done in an interesting way, with one being written like a typical book and one in a journal style. However, speaking of the perspectives, there's only so much I can take of going back and forth between "I'm going to make an obviously horrible decision" and "my mom is telling me to pray about my anxiety." Neither of those plots really worked for me, although I thought the climax was done really well.

CW: school shooting drill that is believed to be real, injuries, anxiety and panic attacks, transphobia, racism, homophobia, potential incarceration, past bullying, past surgery, past family member death

Wow, this was an intense, important and beautiful story. I loved the messages in this as well as the main characters and how they grow.

Thank you to NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Avery Hart, the first narrator, is terrified of losing control of her body. She used to love physical activity and was always jumping on her trampoline and riding dirt bikes with her best friend, but her diagnosis of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome has made that nearly impossible without injuring herself. A recent attempt to get back on her dirt bike left her needing shoulder surgery and a sling, and now she's in physical therapy often. Avery's moms and her online message board understand her fears, but Avery doesn't think they help, because she knows she can never truly get better and is afraid of needing caregivers for the rest of her life. And now she's trying to figure out how to ask the girl she likes, Sarah, to hang out.

Sarah Bell, the second narrator, thinks she's losing her mind. Ever since her aunt died and her favorite cousin moved away, she's been having panic attacks and she doesn't know how to stop them. She can't seem to make new friends, she's falling behind in math and science, and constantly has to listen to her conservative Catholic parents argue with her brother. Sarah turns to art as a form of coping, particularly Spirograph patterns, and her chapters include both her narrative and the artworks. She looks up to Avery because of how fearless and confident she appears, but when she realizes her interest in Avery is more than friendly, she questions how much of her religious upbringing applies to her anymore.

On the day Avery is supposed to talk to Sarah, their school has an active shooter drill with fake gunshot sound effects, without telling anyone it's a drill. Their reasoning? They don't think anyone takes the normal drills seriously. What results is widespread panic and everyone fearing for their lives, and Avery, Sarah, and Avery's best friend Mason want to fight back against whoever decided to traumatize them like that. But Avery's and Sarah's ideas are very different, and Sarah and Mason want to stop Avery from potentially hurting herself in the name of revenge.

The main characters and the stories surrounding both mental and physical health reminded me a lot of The Edge Of Anything, which is one of my favorite YA books, but with queer characters and a romantic aspect. And since the main characters are 13/14 and on the "older" side of MG, YA readers should definitely read this too.

Jules Machias, author of Indie Next List Pick Both Can Be True, delivers another inspiring story about how an unexpected friendship transforms the lives of two middle schoolers.
Avery and Sarah are battling things internally and externally. This story has many trigger warnings so please read them. Suffering from anxiety is not an easy task at such a young age and Sarah is truly a testament to this. With her parents not being in her corner you really have to wonder how many real life stories are similar. Throw in a decent sized family with other siblings and you're going to get quite a bit of stress. Avery has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disorder that affects her joints and this is such a great story to introduce this disorder and inform others of what this means. The story of their bond is a warm cuddly feeling that pushes you through this book. I definitely rec.