If You Can't Take the Heat
Penguin Young Readers Group · Print & ebook · May 13, 2025
A Young Adult pick for readers exploring If You Can't Take the Heat.
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- Who it’s for
- A bruised football season gives way to kitchen work, romance, and danger.
- Genres
- Coming of Age, YA Food & Cooking, Football
- Published
- Penguin Young Readers Group, May 13, 2025
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Start with this bookAbout this book
From James Beard Award–winning author Michael Ruhlman, a coming-of-age story about finding a new life and love in the kitchen…and trying not to get burned along the way. Out now in paperback! When high school football star Theo Claverback breaks his leg just weeks after a devastating break-up, he’s forced to call an audible on his summer plans and put his college ones on hold.
Continue reading
He soon finds himself in the most unlikely of places for a jock on crutches: the kitchen of an upscale French restaurant, where he’ll work as a prep cook while his heart and leg heal. But it’s in the kitchen where Theo finds new purpose and a new romance. As he becomes a trusted employee to Chef and is welcomed into his inner circle, Theo begins to discover the true costs of running a restaurant—and what happens when you get into hot water with the wrong people. Set in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1980, If You Can't Take the Heat is a gritty look inside the belly of an upscale kitchen where love and danger boil behind closed doors.
Heat and Heart
A bruised football season gives way to kitchen work, romance, and danger.
Come here for
- Coming-of-age grit as an injured athlete finds purpose in restaurant work
- Romance and danger simmering behind the doors of an upscale kitchen
Expect
- A Cleveland-set story rooted in 1980 and the pressures of restaurant life
- A mix of first love, kitchen labor, and real peril
Where it sits
| YA Food & Cooking | 93% |
|---|---|
| Coming of Age | 53% |
| Football | 34% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Coming of Age
- YA Food & Cooking
- Football
- Authors
- Dan Bittner, Michael Ruhlman, Listening Library
- Publisher
- Penguin Young Readers Group
- Published
- May 13, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Coming of Age