the way i devoured this book up whenever i wasn’t working or sleeping — loved the romance, the friendships, and the family dynamics. i’m just not sure how much i loved the whole other side of the plot, the fantasy side, with jordan and his abilities. it may have just been me but i felt as though there were some plot holes and moments in which the fantastical elements to the story were rushed.

looking at this novel as a romance between the main character, dylan, and someone who doesn’t want to be close to dylan in fear of hurting him, jordan, then five out of five stars. but with the fantastical plot holes, sadly, it goes down to a four of five.

While this had a very good premise, I wasn't as captivated as I thought and was bothered by a few elements. Sadly too many little things made me not like it.
Not the writing style, but the portrayal of characters and their behaviours. It's completely personal so I'd still recommend it to people who I know could like the plot.

The stalking, Harry Potter references and fatphobia is something I cannot deal with. So yeah, I cannot really recommend this book to anyone.

Well this was a ride and I wish I could say that it was a good one but I am not a fan. This book had some interesting qualities and a couple redeeming characters, but as a whole it has a lot of problematic things happening.

So this whole book is focused on our MC Dylan who is gay and never had a boyfriend and during one night at his Dairy Queen shift, a cute boy walks in after closing, orders ice cream and proceeds to blow it up with his hand. When Dylan chases after him and touches his shoulder or something, his hand gets burned. Then despite being told to stay away and not follow, Dylan proceeds to low key stalk this boy.

Anyway, that's not really my issue with the book. This book wanted to be a cross between The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune and The Bright Sessions by Lauren Shippen. It tried to have a queer MC who developed some sort of superpower and then has to fight off a villain and it just didn't work. It is somehow super rushed and super slow at the same time. The details of the villain of the story don't match up and there isn't enough background to really understand what's happening besides the most basic of facts.

Let's get to the actual problematic moments and not just my subjective dislike of this book.

The Harry Potter reference. Are you freaking kidding me. In a queer book published in 2022! This is unacceptable.

The casual sexism and misogyny. Our MC has two girl best friends and I feel like the author tried to use that to offset the constant undertone of misogyny from this book. A couple instances are the continuing use of the word "hoes" to describe Catholic school girls, the villainization of the cheer coach who is older and apparently smelly and fat. The coach who they all make fun of for eating lean cuisines when they obviously don't work and the connection between being mean and being unhygienic and fat is a bad freaking look. Can we stop being fatphobic please? Then there is the fact that the only other queer character in this book besides are two seemingly wonderful gay boy MC and LI, is a bitchy mean girl. I mean sure, glorify gay boys and vilify lesbians. Sounds cool 🙄

Then there's the matter of the GSA. Can we please stop calling these gay straight alliances? Have we not evolved past this point? I was told a while ago that most places are now calling these gender and sexuality groups instead. I can't remember if the term is alliance or something else for the A but the whole premise is that it is more than just gay and straight and that it is about gender and sexuality as spectrums. Then within that group, a group full of allies, the faculty advisor introduces himself with " male pronouns " and no one corrects him. What the fuck? There's no such thing as male pronouns. Just say he/him if that's what you mean.

I found myself distracted by the small problematic moments and ultimately it caused me to dislike this story in its entirety. It's could have been a decent book, but it actually is one to avoid in my opinion.

I knew I'd be in for a treat from the moment Dylan & Jordan met - an exploding blizzard?! I mean c'mon, what a fun meet cute! I thought the two of them had great chemistry, witty banter is definitely key for me in any romance & there was plenty of that throughout. They were adorable & I really enjoyed getting to see their journey together as the action kicked up, but as much as I loved Dylan & Jordan, the true standout for me was the friendship between Dylan, Kirsten & Perry. It's so important to have supportive friends in your corner, especially during those awkward, unsure phases we all go through as young adults, & Zepka really nailed that dynamic. This read as more of a contemporary coming-of-age/romance than sci-fi, so if you're more of a sci-fi/fantasy reader I'd say adjust your expectations accordingly, but for me, the balance was perfect. I thought this was totally original & unique, brought up a ton of great topics (acceptance of yourself & others, coming out, platonic vs. romantic love, to name a few), & delivered on giving us an exciting sci-fi adventure with queer characters right at the forefront.

This book was just ok for me. Nothing stood out or stuck with me. I don't regret reading it by any means but it's one that I think over time I will slowly forget as the characters were just ok.

I remember one day on TikTok about a 6 months ago seeing Brian Zepka pop up on my For You Page, talking about finally getting the chance to write the book he had dreamed about reading. From all his hype, I grew more and more excited about the chance to read "The Temperature of Me and You," but I was sadly let down with this underwhelming and messy debut novel.

The premise sounds interesting enough. One day, this kid is working at Dairy Queen when a really attractive guy walks in, after close, and when he touches his Blizzard it explodes. What launches after this interaction is a deep dive into the new kid in town and what happened to him that makes him hot to the touch. Who is he? What is he doing? What are the guys in the silver cars doing? And what's with all the fires starting?

Again, it sounds great on paper, but this book is in a word messy and just all over the place. Normally I fly through books, reading them in anywhere from 2-5 days, but I spent multiple weeks with this one because it was simply a drag to get through. The pacing is so off, with some scenes being boring and so mundane, to others that just jumped between parts of the action. I remember reading the scene where Jordan tells Dylan of his powers and being genuinely confused on the logistics of how they were standing and interacting with each other.

In addition to the pacing being weird, the actual good parts of the story felt glanced over and would focus on the more mundane aspects of his life. While Dylan was literally developing powers of his own (while also being sick and looking like a walking corpse? That was confusing) it goes back to what he's doing in high school. Something I personally thought dragged the book down.

Furthermore the writing was just not great. Up until the last 80% I was reading every single line and was still getting confused, but to finish the book out I skimmed every page quickly, but I saw no change in my comprehension of the scenes. Personally, if I can skim it and get the same picture, that's not the sign of good writing. I understand this is Zepka's debut novel, but I can't in good faith say if I think his future works will be good,

Overall this book was really disappointing. In theory it was an amazing idea, but it was not executed well. I hope Zepka keeps with it with these ideas because they sound great, but the execution was just too many points off for me.

Story and characters were fun but the writing felt a little too juvenile, even for a YA novel. Definitely think this is going to be a popular one but I’m not a fan of cheesy reads.

pros:
- really cool cover!!
- interesting concept

cons:
- first of all, the pacing felt really off- the main character and love interest get together so quickly, and the whole plot was all over the place. it felt like nothing happened, but the book was also pretty long.
- all of the characters felt so flat. the main character just annoyed me, and his narration felt pretty unrealistic, since the writing made him sound as if he was a lot younger that seventeen. the love interest and side characters weren't much more interesting either. the romance didn't make any sense to me, and i didn't feel any of the high stakes that were supposed to be there.
- the sci-fi part wasn't really explained at all? i'm still not sure how the whole powers thing happened, or why there were actually people after them at all. i usually wouldn't mind this too much, but without compelling characters or romance, this was all that was really left, and the execution was disappointing.

thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book for this honest review.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for supplying me of an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, so I am very sorry to say that it did not live up to my expectations. Even for a debut, I felt that this book was lacking and would have benefited from a lot more editing.

The story concept was solid - Dylan meets a cute boy who it turns out is literally too hot to handle, and soon Dylan finds himself coming down with the same strange heat powers. As Dylan and Jordan get closer, it becomes harder to keep Jordan’s secret as he finds out where Jordan came from, how he got his powers, and why it’s so important that they keep it hidden.

My main issue with this book is that there were so many plot holes. From the description, I was expecting this book to have a lot more fantasy elements. It makes it sound like Jordan is an alien or some type of fantasy creature. Instead, we get a very short backstory of Jordan that does not at all explain how he actually got his abilities. There are scientists after him, but never does the author explain what they want with him or what they hope to accomplish by studying his abilities. There is also no discussion on how Jordan’s “illness” or abilities were transferred to Dylan, and the characters never seem to question it. This book had potential, but it needed a lot more information and connections between plot points.

The characters also made decisions throughout the book that didn’t quite fit. For example, when Dylan discovers he has contracted Jordan’s abilities, he doesn’t once consider going and finding Jordan to tell him or ask him for help. He even goes so far as to lie to Jordan about it. There is no clear reason why Dylan would keep this a secret. There is also a point where Jordan tells Dylan that this illness is slowly killing them (it isn’t). Dylan seems perfectly okay with this? They never talk about how fast it is killing them, how Jordan knows this, or even how it is killing them. Dylan seems to accept this right away and doesn’t get upset that he is apparently dying because he touched a hot boy.

A smaller issue was the writing style. There was a huge amount of telling instead of showing, with pages of narrative that were not relevant to the story. I think this book could have been half as long and nothing would have changed. There was a lot of passages with “I did this. Then I did this. And then I did this” which really pulled me out of the story. I also noticed several occasions where the same words or phrases were used multiple times in the same passage, which seemed excessive and unnecessary.

Overall, I was very disappointed with his book. The cover is stunning, but for a book that markets itself as a queer romance with a fantastical, mystery plot - it had very little of either. I feel that this book had a lot of potential, but needed to be reworked and thoroughly edited. This author has room for improvement, but I would still consider reading Brian Zepka’s next release.

The Temperature of Me and You drew me in with its beautiful cover but I really need to start actually thoroughly reading the synopsis of a book before I pick it up. I went into this completely blind so imagine my surprise when suddenly a boy is creating fire with his hands.

Dylan is a normal teenager in his junior year of high school. He goes to school, spends time with his best friends Kirsten and Perry, and once a week he works a shift at the local Dairy Queen. Everything changes when a super attractive stranger walks into Dairy Queen while he's on shift and promptly makes a blizzard explode. Dylan is confused by this stranger and decides to get to know him- and not just because he thinks he's attractive. Through a series of events he discovers that his name is Jordan and he can create fire out of thin air.

I felt like the pacing of this story was a little off. I feel as though some scenes that were more action based went really fast and that the more mundane scenes of being at school or home dragged a bit. I also didn't really enjoy Dylan as a protagonist unfortunately. For a lot of the story he was just very self centered or was so focused on prioritizing Jordan, who he'd only known for like 2 weeks, over everyone else around him. I understand that the circumstances were high stakes but also he was snapping at his best friends and family over any small inconvenience or disagreement.

There were other things about the book that I really enjoyed though. I loved the plot and everything going on with HydroPro and Dr. Ivan. It was all very intriguing and always left me wondering what would happen next.

I also loved Savanna's character. I love the growth and development she went through. She was an incredibly fun character, whether she was being bitchy or genuine. I liked her.


This was a fun book! I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone who wants a fun gay romance with a side of some super powers.

3.5 stars

The best books are the ones that surprise you, and that’s exactly what this was. The Temperature of Me and You is a unique blend of contemporary and science fiction with a great cast of characters and an adorable romance. I devoured it in just two sittings—a matter of hours—and would definitely recommend it!

The only reason I didn’t give it five stars was that I felt a few things weren’t explained as well as they could’ve been. I wanted to know more about how both Jordan and Dylan got their abilities, as well as the vaguely referenced science experiments.

[4.5 stars]

I cannot adequately express in words how absolutely adorable this book is. Please don’t confuse adorable with precious. This book is a cute, sweet, YA sci-fi romance. It’s definitely not all hearts-in-eyes and rainbows everywhere, but overall the book is a sweet oeuvre to old friendships, new friendships, and first loves in an unconventional science fiction package.

The only thing keeping this book from reaching five stars is how far I think the author stretched my ability to suspend disbelief when it came to the main character’s relationship with his parents. It was an uneven family dynamic that never quite solidified enough in my mind to make sense for the story arc at large. Other than that, this book is a great read in this genre and I highly recommend it.

The Temperature of Me and You centers on Dylan, who is navigating the various relatable high school milestones: hanging out with his amazing best friends, failing chemistry, working a minimum wage job on the weekends, and... developing a crush on a hot guy. Literally and metaphorically. When Dylan meets Jordan, they immediately hit it off. Dylan discovers there is much more than meets the eye, though, when he finds out Jordan burns to the touch.

I think I had too high of expectations going into this one. I thought the premise was really interesting and I was really pleasantly surprised and excited when I received this ARC, but I think if I came in with no expectations I would have enjoyed it more. That isn't to say that I thought it was bad, but I just think the writing style wasn't for me. The main character felt a little too shallow to be relatable, and a lot of times it felt like it was trying too hard to be funny (I may just be too old, though). I also found the love story to have developed too quickly, and I didn't understand why they liked each other as much as they did. I did enjoy the friends, though, and the plot did keep me interested almost the entire time. There were some twists I wasn't expecting which kept me on my toes a bit. I would definitely recommend this book for a younger audience, and anyone who wants to give it a try!

Thank you to NetGalley and Disney Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I have a really weird relationship with this book. For the first 200 pages, I was sure I was going to give it a one-star rating. If I hadn't been reading it specifically to review, I probably would have stopped reading altogether. The characters felt flat and one-dimensional. A lot of the dialogue felt like the cheesy kind of dialogue that adults use when they write about teens, The plotline felt absurdly predictable, right up to the end of the book. Worst of all, I think, was Savannah's characterization. For the first three-fourths of the book she is so unrealistically, cartoonishly evil without an ounce of nuance or motive until the book's eleventh hour. There were random little plot holes, like when a vending machine at the main character's school is set on fire and then never discussed again. No repercussions. No aftermath. Also, the book's repeated descriptions of things like snot and vomit made it very difficult to read as a person who gets queasy easily, though I fully admit that this won't be a problem everyone deals with while reading.

However, by the end of the book, I found myself wanting to give it three stars. It earns solidly middling marks. This is a firmly "meh" book for me. I don't regret reading it all the way through, but I was eager to finish it so I could move on to another book I would enjoy more. Despite all the flaws I listed above, the book did have its charming points. I won't list them all to avoid giving spoilers, but one example is that I loved Dylan's coming out story and the analogy he used of shining his flashlight on someone.

I'm sure there are people out there who would love this book, so if you enjoyed it then I'm happy for you. It just came up short of my expectations.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

I really enjoyed this! It was a super cute YA contemporary with a sci fi twist thrown in. I enjoyed Dylan as a MC and his friendship with both his best friends, Kirsten and Perry. His sorta meet cute with Jordan definitely set up an interesting romance with Jordan being hit to the touch and shooting fireballs out of his hands.

Honestly my only complaints were that we didn't have Jordan's POV and I just felt like the ending happened way too soon. But a solid debut from Brian Zepka and I look forward to more of his works!

Brian Zepka’s debut novel, The Temperature of Me and You, is not a book about teenage superheroes. The story is about two boys with strange and impossible powers, yes, but they are not superheroes in the sense that they fight supervillains, seek justice for all, and save the world in the process. It’s more accurate to say they’re trying to figure out how to acclimate to and live with these powers even though that seems an impossible feat, and they do this while running from the shady megacorporation (the ostensible villain) responsible for turning Jordan Ator into a human torch and, by his close proximity to Dylan, Dylan acquires this power too. Unless I missed it, how or why it’s contagious and passes from Jordan to Dylan but not from Jordan and Dylan to anyone else was one of those pesky little questions I was left wishing had been better explored and developed.

Dylan also somehow acquires an unfortunate and unreliable “upgrade” with his fire power, which he has a difficult time controlling and makes him even more of an outcast at school than he already was. I felt an awful lot of sympathy for him as he struggled not only with his lack of control but also in his relationship with Jordan, and with his two best friends. Dylan’s new powers alienate him from Perry and Kirsten because he can’t/won’t tell them what’s happening to him, so he chooses to ghost them instead, which causes hurt feelings and friction between them.

The Temperature of Me and You gets all the angsts and dilemmas and dramas that come with crushes and first loves and friendships right, which works in its favor. There is also the requisite bully who, in this case, is misunderstood and simply trying to figure out who she is. When she finally finds the courage to confess her secret to someone kind and caring enough to listen—that happens to be Dylan—it hits emotionally, as it should. Sometimes, however, the characters do come across very much like teenagers written by an adult who hasn’t spent much time with teens recently, but maybe that’s only my perception. Some of the other characters who round out the cast include Jordan’s aunt and uncle, who are, by and large, shadowy background figures; Dylan’s little sister, who doesn’t influence the story much; and his parents, who are supportive and loving (sometimes cringingly so), but they are also inexplicably unconcerned, or under-concerned, about Dylan’s sudden and mysterious “illness” that causes him to run an insanely high fever. Then again, the abstracted parent stereotype isn’t new to YA.

In the end, the superpowers storyline was little more than a different-ish way of delivering Dylan and Jordan to boyfriend status. Unfortunately, it substituted for them spending time getting to know each other so readers could buy into their relationship. I wish I could say The Temperature of Me and You is a perfect, or at least near-perfect, book, or that it’s good. I’ll admit it’s entirely possible I had unrealistically high expectations for it, given the powerhouse that is Disney editing and publishing behind it, but I don’t feel it’s unfair to say it’s important, when a book is written in the first person, present tense, to feel the sense of immediacy and connection with the point-of-view character the narration is supposed to deliver. I won’t say that connection never happened, but it was less frequent that I wanted it to be. The story does touch on some important subjects that teens need and deserve to see. And, as always, the beauty of a book is in the eye of each of its readers.

DRC provided by Disney Publishing Worldwide via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Representation: gay white protagonist, gay white secondary character, lesbian white secondary character, gay white tertiary character, queer tertiary character.

Content Warning: mentions of parental death, violence, bullying, homophobia, HP reference, mentions of torture and human experimentation, alcohol, mentions of suicidal ideation.

The Temperature of You and Me by Brian Zepka is a contemporary novel with a heavy dose of science-fiction and a comparable dose of queer romance between two lonely boys.

Dylan Highmark is looking for a boyfriend, but his choices are scarce and his friends’ help, while well-intentioned, does not aid him in his search. His life is profoundly subverted though when Jordan Ator approaches him outside his workplace. The boy is too hot (to touch) and Dylan finds himself involved with him and his complicated life very quickly.

I have to admit I was quite disappointed when I finished this book. The disappointment mostly derived from the high expectations I had for the novel and when it did not meet them I felt quite sad. That does not mean I thought the book was bad, the fact that I only found it fine was the disappointing part because the extremely interesting premise and the breath-taking cover managed to get me way too excited about this book. I also want to add though that I read this book during a difficult period in my life and I think I want to revisit it in the future to see if this reading experience is the actual one or the external issues I was and am still living have somewhat impacted the experience and therefore ruined partially the book for me.

As I said above the premise is the strongest selling point of this book and the cover (plus the incredible and so on-point interior design) definitely helps catching the attention of a potential reader. I loved the idea, but I had some problems with the execution. The pacing felt a tad off to me and I did not like how the plot stagnated in the middle, only to go on full-speed towards the end. I would have preferred a more gradual crescendo.

Another aspect that did not sit well with me was how quick and ready Dylan was to forgive and forget Savanna’s past and present abuse and bullying and while I can appreciate the deeper meaning of “everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about”, I am not sure this arc was given enough space to fluidly develop though. It felt too rushed and I felt it only was born because of circumstances and not because Dylan actually wanted to start a friendship with Savanna.

Despite all that, I cannot say I did not enjoy this reading experience in part. I really loved the friendship between Perry (my favourite character), Dylan and Kirsten and the intrigue of the premise (I know I already said quite a few times, but it bears repeating. I think it is fairly original).

One could ask why I am giving a three-stars rating to the book if I have more negative feedbacks than positive ones about it and my answer would be that The Temperature of You and Me by Brian Zepka is in absolutely no way a bad book and I urge everyone to give it a chance.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read an ARC of this book. Happy debut day Brian Zepka!

The Temperature of Me and You - I was immediately drawn to how pretty the cover was, but of course stayed for how engaging the story was!

This book incorporates a queer couple, superpowers, sci-fi, and high schoolers navigating life and love. Since this was my first "superhero" genre book I didn't expect to truly get into the story this much! I think the talk of science also make this book very unique in my opinion. The couple in this story was so cute! Dylan and Jordan's chemistry (no pun intended) was definitely there!

If you're into the themes I listed above, I definitely think you should pick up a copy of The Temperature of Me and You :) Solid debut novel

Thank you to Hyperion and NetGalley for offering me a digital ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Brian Zepka's The Temperature of Me and You — putting aside its strange and slightly wordy title — looks to be a strong competitor in the 2022 LGBTQ+ YA canon. It's been hyped by a lot of my favorite authors, and since it releases tomorrow I finally decided to read it and see what it was about.

I didn't go in expecting a masterpiece from a debut author, so I'm not going to blab on about how it disappointed me or anything, but I think it's fair to say that the hype for this book is a tad overstated. As a speculative fiction romance, it's kind of cute, but the love interests are separated for half the book and we really don't get to know Jordan well. I feel like the sci-fi elements were also a little half-baked, especially considering that they just never addressed how Jordan's powers spread to Dylan. And some dude we don't even know gets arrested (and maybe even sentenced??) for them in the end?

This book probably would have been more enjoyable if it was about half the length it is now. Still, I think Brian Zepka's writing holds promise and I wouldn't give up on him yet. I hope he can pick it up with the next book and write something truly stellar — maybe with a more believable sci-fi plot.