  We study the dynamics of quenched fundamental matter in $\mathcal{N}=2^\ast$
supersymmetric large $N_c$ $SU(N_c)$ Yang-Mills theory, extending our earlier
work to finite temperature. We use probe D7-branes in the holographically dual
thermalized generalization of the $\mathcal{N}=2^\ast$ Pilch-Warner
gravitational background found by Buchel and Liu. Such a system provides an
opportunity to study how key features of the dynamics are affected by being in
a non-conformal setting where there is an intrinsic scale, set here by the
mass, $m_H$, of a hypermultiplet. Such studies are motivated by connections to
experimental studies of the quark-gluon plasma at RHIC and LHC, where the
microscopic theory of the constituents, QCD, has a scale, $\Lambda_{\rm QCD}$.
We show that the binding energy of mesons in the $\mathcal{N}=2^\ast$ theory is
increased in the presence of the scale $m_H$, and that subsequently the
meson-melting temperature is higher than for the conformal case.
