Review: Fight or Flight by Samantha Young

Fight or Flight
by Samantha Young
Publisher: Berkley
Publication date: Oct. 9, 2018
Genre: Romance
Rating:

The universe is conspiring against Ava Breevort. As if flying back to Phoenix to bury a childhood friend wasn’t hell enough, a cloud of volcanic ash traveling from overseas delayed her flight back home to Boston. Her last ditch attempt to salvage the trip was thwarted by an arrogant Scotsman, Caleb Scott, who steals a first class seat out from under her. Then over the course of their journey home, their antagonism somehow lands them in bed for the steamiest layover Ava’s ever had. And that’s all it was–until Caleb shows up on her doorstep.

When pure chance pulls Ava back into Caleb’s orbit, he proposes they enjoy their physical connection while he’s stranded in Boston. Ava agrees, knowing her heart’s in no danger since a) she barely likes Caleb and b) his existence in her life is temporary. Not long thereafter Ava realizes she’s made a terrible error because as it turns out Caleb Scott isn’t quite so unlikeable after all. When his stay in Boston becomes permanent, Ava must decide whether to fight her feelings for him or give into them. But even if she does decide to risk her heart on Caleb, there is no guarantee her stubborn Scot will want to risk his heart on her….

Fight or Flight is an enemies to lovers style romance. Ava and Caleb meet in the airport when they have an altercation over the last first class seat available. However, their argument is for nothing when their flight gets cancelled and they are left scrambling to find a flight to their destination. Of course, they soon find out that the universe is playing a joke on them when they turn out to be seatmates for the long flight, and then continue to bump into each other after they’ve arrived at their destination. They decide to enjoy one night of passion, but pretty soon realize that once is not enough.

I am a sucker for any kind of romance. Usually an enemies to lovers story starts off with the characters having some sort of history, and the reader is just left catching up. However, you are witness to these two meeting for the first time and how much they seem to dislike each other right from the get go. Caleb finds her to be uppity and a bit of a beotch… which may not be so far fetched given how she sort of snapped at him about getting the last first class seat. Meanwhile, Ava views Caleb as a self-righteous jerk who has zero manners. Which is also something I could totally see given the fact that he did knock into her with his carry-on bag as he cut the line to the boarding terminal desk to see about getting upgraded to first-class, he didn’t even question whether he did anything wrong when she was clearly upset about the whole thing. He just called her crazy and went about his day. So, yeah… their first impression of each other was not a good one.

While I’d like to say that these two got better as time went on, they didn’t. They sleep together knowing that they dislike the other person. Even when they decide to start fresh and become friends with benefits, Caleb is always quick to shoot Ava down. Any time he feels like she might be developing feelings or that things are moving past casual, he draws back and does some pretty stupid stuff. Since the book is only written in Ava’s point of view, you have no clue what he’s thinking. A lot of the time Caleb came off as a jerk and while I’d like the say he redeemed himself in the end, he really didn’t.

Even though I was not a huge fan of Caleb’s character and the way he treated Ava sometimes, I still couldn’t seem to put the book down. I thought the author did a great job writing about two strangers who just rub each other the wrong way, but have undeniable chemistry. I know that this is a stand-alone novel, but I was really REALLY hoping for Ava’s best friend to get her own story. I’ll be crossing my fingers that the author gives her her own book sometime in the future.

Fight or Flight was an enjoyable enemy to lovers romance. It took a while for these two to be on the same page, and even still there were issues to overcome. However, I found myself unable to put the book down.