Book Review: Fight or Flight

Fight or Flight
Samantha Young
4/5

Not going to lie, the synopsis of this book didn't really interest me. I was about to get onto an airplane though and panicked because I didn't have enough to read and there was no wait list for it on the library app. It may have been partly due to my low expectations, but I really enjoyed it! I don't like books that advertise as like "oh we're just going to be friends with benefits" cause I don't really care for detailed sex-scenes, they're kind of uncomfortable, but other than a couple of scenes it was pretty mild.

Ava has had kind of a rough life, not in a traditional oh-she's-suffered-so-much, but more of a like she's upper middle-class and she didn't like her life but it wasn't that bad. I appreciate her as a character for that, because she acknowledges that her life was bad she doesn't try to excuse it away, but she doesn't make that the central part of who she is. Also, people assume so much from these contemporary romances, like they can have a romance and still make the female protagonist into a strong independent person, and that's what Ava is! She dresses the way she wants to dress, doesn't do it for guys and deliberately tells guys off who thinks that's what she's doing. Samantha Young doesn't cram it down our throats, but like we all wish we had the confidence to dress the way we want, whether in Jimmy Choo's or normal skinny jeans.

I did think that the commitment-phobia got a little excessive and then kind of fizzled out. We spend a whole book with him being a jerk whenever a relationship is mentioned and then he's just totally forgiven? I guess that speaks to Ava's confidence, but how could you ever trust someone after all of that? He did do a pretty nice apology I guess.

I think I'd recommend, as a kind of fast and non-committal kind of book, which I feel is what I'm kind of doing these days. I appreciate it because it deals with real-world issues, or what you'd face in a real-relationship, and does so in a mostly sweet way.