A review by tepidgirlsummer
The Temperature of Me and You by Brian Zepka

emotional hopeful mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

This is a review of an ARC from Edelweiss. 
 
First of all, can we acknowledge that fantastic cover art? I am obsessed with the cover art. 
 
The premise of this book is cute: Boy meets new boy in town. Boy 2 (Jordan) has Secrets™, which Boy 1 (Dylan) accidentally finds out about (in this case, that his average temperature is 110℉ and sometimes he accidentally/on purpose sets stuff on fire). Dylan suddenly finds himself going through changes; keeping secrets from his family and his best friends, Perry and Kirsten; trying to solve a mystery; and dealing with a homophobic bully while experiencing the agony and ecstasy of falling in love for the first time. Phew! That’s a lot of balls in the air! 
 
And it is a lot of balls in the air, truly, which I think is why this book ultimately didn’t do it for me. It clocks at 415 pages, so there’s a lot of room for a lot of things to happen, and part of the problem (for me) is that things just keep happening, with little to no resolution before more things happen. For example, Dylan is keeping these massive secrets from his parents and sister. Periodically, his family pops in to be concerned and/or disappointed. I kept expecting things to come to a head with that, but each time the conflict abruptly ended and most of the time wasn’t addressed again. Why keep inserting these half conflicts? Why not spend more time focusing on the Big Mystery portion? Or even examining the conflict between Dylan and his friends when he starts acting secretive and distant? 
 
It took me a while to finish reading due to life stuff, so it’s admittedly hard for me to accurately judge the pacing of the novel. But the sense I got as I read was that things were scattered and moved slowly until around the last fifth of the book. Suddenly, there were plot twists and people being sneaky and relationships being tested and secrets being revealed. And then it ended. 
 
I didn’t feel much of a connection to any of the characters and I’m generally a character-driven story kinda gal, and some parts were a little cheesy. BUT. I marked a lot of pages where a lot of cute things happened. I love cute things. Give me all of the “oh my god, I just touched their hand with my hand, now what do I do?!” moments, please. I will also take all of the tender gestures. The overall awkwardness of hanging out with someone you’re into and stressing about whether they’re into you back, of going on a first date, kissing for the first time, etc., was captured well. There were also a few times when Dylan had teenager-y epiphanies about love and relationships—not just his romantic relationship with Jordan, but his relationships with his best friends and peers in general. 
 
I think this is a good book for anyone who wants a YA book that’s light, low-conflict, more about plot development than character development, and generally pretty wholesome. It’s got some mystery, some sci-fi, some romance, and just a dash of teen angst. (I say “just a dash” because for the most part I think the angst is very much warranted, given the situations the characters find themselves in.) Overall, not something I’ll run to buy immediately but I will probably read it again.
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