Clever and original full of charm and snark. Mel and her girlfriends were the best! It's part Sex and the City meets Never Been Kissed with a side of The IT Crowd.

The author is a former New Yorker who now lives in San Diego, and she absolutely nailed the NY scene, the dating app phenomenon and she wrote a strong and relatable main character. I loved that Mel was at her angriest when someone said "everyone knows girls can't code for shit".

Swipe right. Hookups. Ghosting. Can you ever really trust someone? I've been married 18 years and I still found this to be a fast paced, funny and modern romance.

2.5 stars

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley.

While she did slightly redeem herself by the end of the book, I struggled with this story mainly because the main character was pretty unlikable. I didn’t find her chemistry with Alex to be believable due to lack of character development on both parts. In fact, most of the characters were pretty undeveloped and one dimensional. The idea was cute, but for me it just fell flat.

This was my first Kristin Rockaway book I've read and I can honestly say I loved it! The dialogue was funny and witty and I loved following the main character as she navigated friendships, a relationship and work drama. I would have liked a little more romance but overall, the book was a solid read. I breezed through it in just two or three sittings. Can't wait for her next novel. Thanks to NetGalley for introducing me to another amazing author!

Summary
This follows Mel, a female programmer who works the helpdesk at a startup incubator. The "hatchlings" she works with are often entitled and misogynistic.
Mel reaches her breaking point after her date stands her up and a man sends her a dick pic on the popular dating app, Fluttr. Out of anger, she creates the site JerkAlert where women can review the men/dates they meet on Fluttr. Seemingly overnight, the site goes viral. But Mel doesn't want anyone to know she is the person behind the site, and finds herself in over her head.

Overview
This is feminist contemporary about how Mel deals with the sexism. While this is classified as romance, the romance is definitely not at the forefront of the story.

➸ POV - This is told in 1st person from Mel's POV.

➸ Mel - 26. Works the helpdesk at Hatch, a startup incubator. After one too many bad dates and dick pics, she codes up a site called JerkAlert where woman can safely review their Fluttr matches.

➸ Alex - Hatchling at Hatch. (That is pretty much the extent of the character details we get...)

Content Warnings: Sexism, Harassment, Cheating, Misogyny

What I Liked
➸ This book is feminist AF. I am always here for books about women in underrepresented fields. I loved that this book tackled some really difficult but important and timely topics - online dating, harassment, sexism.
➸ As a Software Engineer myself, I love reading about women in that field. I think it is important to de-stigmatize women in STEM fields.
➸ I think my favorite part of this was the strong female friendship the main character had. There was never any women hating or backstabbing. The group of friends always had each other's backs and stood by each other, even when they didn't necessarily approved. I loved seeing such healthy and positive friendships in a book.

What I Didn't Like
➸ There was not a single subtle moment in this book. While I appreciated the feminist stance of this book, I felt like I was being beaten over the head at every page. It was absolutely nonstop - coworkers: sexist, boss: sexist, stranger on the train: sexist, boyfriends: sexist.
➸ Everyone that is except Alex! Ugh, this book painted every male character out to be a truly vile person but then the love interest was obnoxiously naive. There is literally a scene where is talking to Mel's friends about how he didn't know online dating was so difficult for women or that unsolicited dick pics were a thing. Was this guy living under a rock? The juxtaposition of his naivety versus the never-ending misogynistic hoard was so jarring and cringey. I get it, we're supposed to like Alex.
➸ But unfortunately I felt absolutely nothing about the relationship. Alex's character gets so little personality there was never anything for me to like or hold onto.
➸ This used my least favorite trope - miscommunication. Mel is so convinced everyone is out to get here that she jumps to conclusions and sabotages her relationship. I'm not saying stuff like this doesn't happen, I just hate reading about it over and over again.

Overall this missed the mark for me. As someone who works in this industry, I was so excited to see myself in a book. But I somehow wasn't able to relate at all this story or these characters. Everything felt so forced and over the top that I was never able to become immersed in the story.

Review posted to Goodreads on 8/27/19
Review posted to blog on 9/4/19

While this book had a lot of good things to say (friends are important, stand up for yourself and others), it also perpetuates a lot of stereotypes (all male programmers are lewd, crude, and rude). I also found it very hard to get into at first, and that's never a good thing with a book that's supposed to be fun and easy.

I liked Mel's group of friends, although they're mostly surface characters. (Let's just throw an African American lesbian character to be "inclusive", but never really show her and her dates interacting with anyone else.) I get the feeling, especially with their regular brunches, that this book was going for a Sex & The City vibe. Well, it got that, but forgot the episode He's Just Not That Into You. It was blatantly obvious what was going on with Lia's boyfriend, but when the truth comes out they all just fall into the same "it's all his fault for lying" and nobody ever said, "Why did you ignore the signs?" Mel and Whitney are the most cynical of the group, and even they continued with the empty platitudes.

Alex could have been a great character but he, just like Mel, had a victim mentality. (He: Greg is my start-up partner, I can't make him pull his weight. She: I need to pay bills so I'll just take the abuse.) She had various avenues she could have taken, contacting HR regarding the abuse, finding a new job. He could have grown a spine and stood up to Greg about both work and Melanie.

A lot of this felt like drama for drama's sake. Piling up disaster after disaster is a lazy way to build tension in a book. And the entire epilogue was all Telling and no Showing. I would also have liked to see Hatch suffer some kind of consequence for their double standards and toxic misogynistic environment.

Overall an okay book, nothing special and nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd. (And seriously, if your friends never meet you significant other ... BIG RED FLAG. Run the other way.)

The most millennial of the New Adult Romances that have come out, my friends are expecting this one to come their way.

SYNOPSIS
Mel Strickland works at a tech startup company called Hatch, offering tech support to all the brosef “Hatchlings” trying to get their startups up and running. She’s not thrilled with her job—and definitely not too happy getting talked down to all day by a bunch of disrespectful, egotistical frat boys. But even though she’d admit her life is missing a little excitement and challenge, she does appreciate the steady paycheck. It also helps that she’s just met Alex, one of the only Hatchlings who actually seems decent and normal…and possibly worth dating?

What Alex doesn’t know, and what she plans on telling him and everyone else never, is that she’s also just anonymously created a little app of her own called JerkAlert. The app allows women to post reviews of the weird men they’ve dated, all while linking back to the men’s original dating profiles. What starts as a joke after a bad date, quickly goes viral—and no one is more surprised at the app’s success than Mel. Now she’s torn between coming clean and telling the world she created it, or trying to keep it all a secret…and maybe see where a relationship with Alex goes.

MY REVIEW
There are parts of this book that I loved: the unique and relevant premise of the story, the strong female characters, the camaraderie among girlfriends, and the portrayal of women in tech as “hot” and not “nerdy” or awkward. Right from the start, this book had my attention and my respect for absolutely bringing the creativity. I genuinely thought the idea of JerkAlert was genius—rife with legal problems, sure, but genius.

But there were some things I didn’t like. The book could have been edited down. I didn’t need so much play-by-play tormented pontificating as Mel tried to figure out how to handle her dilemma. And I really wish the ending hadn’t been so neatly and abruptly wrapped up. The rest of the book had been so carefully developed (sometimes even too carefully…), it was a shame to feel rushed at the end.

Still, what a fun read. I loved the concept and the characters. This was a perfect novel to get lost in for a couple days.

I just... I completely hated this book. I hated Mel and couldn't get behind her or her actions AT ALL. Also, as someone who works as an admin, yes that is my CAREER, I found this book super condescending.

This book was so cute!! I really enjoyed it. Four stars for me! Mel works at a startup incubator called Hatch, where she is treated horribly by the men who work there. These entitled startup founders think they’re better than Mel, and boy, does she prove them wrong when she invents a dating site called JerkAlert. JerkAlert allows you to see reviews on boys you’re dating from other women. In the midst of this professional whirlwind, Mel is falling for Alex, one of the nice men at her office. Or at least she thinks he’s nice until she seems him on JerkAlert.

This book had a great dose of romance, professional hardship, and a strong group of female friends. I found myself smiling, relating, and laughing along with the characters and their experiences. It was a quick read also! A fun look at 2019 dating scenes also!

Start-up companies are all around these days. This title is set in an incubator company, a place where people can flesh out their start-up concept and hopefully make a go of it.

Mel is a tech at this incubator and she is always looked at as 'the help.' Her dating life is abysmal.

Then an idea is born. To create an app where people can share about all the creeps on the dating app many in the city are using. It becomes an overnight success. Her life seems to be improving...until there is a snag.

Overall, a fun read.

DNF'd I did not like the writing and the main character was very annoying. I was expecting to love this ut ended up not clicking with it

Cute, a little annoying with the toxic masculinity. But also, the crap men and women go through on dating sites is spot on.

The story was decent enough, if not a bit hard to believe and everything was wrapped up in a pretty little bow which was a bit annoying but meh.

this was a super fun read - though i admit i was expecting it to be more romancey, it was still light and enjoyable. definitely recommend.

"How to Hack a Heartbreak" was a far better book than I expected. I appreciated the emphasis of the misogynistic bro culture that infiltrates IT companies and that the RomCom aspect took a backseat while the feminist agenda took the wheel. I've worked in a couple of tech start up companies and the bros were handled with kid gloves, even when everyone knew they were wrong. The arrogance and hostility described in this book as well as the toxic anonymity of the internet were especially well written. I probably can't purchase this book for my library (not my area of collection development), but I will recommend it to my feminist coding friends. 4 stars!

Contemporary fiction is one of those genres that I can read easily, and this book was no exception. It’s not just the genre itself, which usually presents somewhat dramatic storylines with a comedic flair, but the characters. Increasingly, I have found some very relatable and real women, living their lives, and telling it like it is. What’s better than reading about honest women trying to get theirs?

In How to Hack a Heartbreak, we meet Mel. Mel is a single woman living in New York city. Refreshingly, she’s not overly obsessed with fashion or makeup, but she readily acknowledges their role in her life, and the power she can derive from them. Quick point, there is nothing wrong with obsessings over fashion or makeup, I have watched way too many makeup tutorials to ever make that statement. Instead, it was just a different take on a single girl in NYC. Nothing more, nothing less.

Anyway, back to Mel. Mel is a computer science graduate working the help desk at a startup-incubator company. Not her dream job, but it’s dream job adjacent and pays the bills. Honestly, in New York, if it pays your rent and food bills, then adjacent sounds pretty damn good to me. She is trying to date, and quickly realizes how much of her world is dominated by men. How they seem to have the power in most of her interactions and don’t seem to even notice their advantages. Mel hits her breaking point a decides enough is enough and uses her skills to claim some of that control for herself – JerkAlert (.biz not .com) is born.

What I loved most about this book is how everything spun out of control slowly. What started as good decisions ended up having bad consequences, without anyone being able to forsee how things would play out. In the end, Mel learns a lot and can see where she went wrong, but just like in real life, that’s hind sight. We can all play Monday morning quarterback with our decisions, but it’s never helpful unless you figure out a lesson and can apply the learned information to create positive change in the future. Mel does that in a surprising and fun way.

I genuinely enjoyed the characters, especially her group of friends. Lots of different women, coming together to hold each other up. They don’t shy away from telling the truth, which is where I think real, deep friendship is found. Some of their conversations were hysterical and completely on point with reality. We talk in group texts with our friends, we have different lives, not every conversation can be had over coffee at a four top. Real women living real lives.

I have a pet peeve about this book that I must air. In a previous life, before kiddos, I was an attorney. There comes a point in this book where the laws of offer and acceptance become a major factor. This may not bother anyone else, but, basic contract law is pretty simple. Once an offer is accepted in a timely manner, that offer cannot be revoked. Now listen, this is like talking to a doctor about Grey’s Anatomy or worse, General Hospital. This is fiction, and we should just let things go, but once Mel talked to an attorney, I needed someone to say this. Luckily for me, the story was better off without her fighting about the money, but man, I wanted her to stick it to Fluttr.

So, if you’re in the mood for a fun, socially relevant, novel, you can’t go wrong with How to Hack a Heartbreak. Honestly, I was inspired to go do something, and I’ll get right on it as soon as I figure out what that something is. For now, I’ll probably read another book. Until next time.

*Special thanks to Kristin Rockawa and Graydon House for a copy of How to Hack a Heartbreak in exchange for an honest review.

How to Hack a Heartbreak is a funny, realistic look at dating in the modern world.. Mel, the main character, is sick of swiping and waiting for a guy to actually live up to his online personality. She's ready to change the face of online dating and help women find good guys. She's had one too many unsolicited graphic images from guys and she wants to out them to other women. I loved that this book takes a current problem that lots of readers are familiar with--sleazy and unwelcome pictures from dating sites--and finds a solution using the same tech that dating apps use.

This book confronts what it's like to be a woman in the modern world and it does it with a mix of humorous and thoughtful scenes. The author confronts sexism at work through the scenes at Mel's start-up incubator job. She calls out the patriarchal power structures and privilege system that is upheld in these types of work places and allows Mel to explore what it means to be a woman in these settings. Kristin Rockaway also incorporates a little bit of romance in the book that make it stand out.

Readers of The Right Swipe will love this book

How to Hack a Heartbreak isn’t a bad book by any means. It was actually quite enjoyable, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick, easy read. I loved the group of female characters, but I found the development of each character to be somewhat lacking. The plot was okay, nothing mind blowing but not slow or boring either. I just wanted so much more from this book. I loved that our main character Mel is a female coder, of which there are not many. I totally related to her struggles with the typical ‘bros’ that she has to deal with on the daily. But for me, this story didn’t hold any true depth. And to be picky, there’s no way her venture capital pitch would get investors interested. The revenue model was lacking at best. Overall, it was a cute and easy read. I was able to read it fairly quickly, but be warned, it can be a little cringey at times.

I admit it - I love this new wave of social media-centered romance novels.  While I'm too old for this stuff - online dating and the like - I still enjoy the idea that it's possible.  The fun part about How to Hack a Heartbreak was that it showed both the good and bad sides of dating apps.  While Mel had no luck with Fluttr, another friend did.  Something else awesome about this book is that Mel is not just a girl who codes, but a girl who is an amazing coder.  All the backlash and harassment she took while working at Hatch infuriated me, however.  Especially when she finally told her boss and he basically told her to deal with it.  I work in a male-dominated field and am honestly the only female in our company.  However, if I told my boss that one of my co-workers basically sexually harassed me, he would not let it slide.  

Mel was a great character, despite her ill luck with dating apps.  She was smart, she was fiesty, and she was a lot of fun.  On the downside, she did jump to conclusions at times, but considering her past history with men - from her father to her last date - it's understandable why she might not be as ready to believe as others.  Her group of friends were the best though.  It didn't matter if they were having equal trouble finding a mate or in a seemingly perfect relationship, they were always there for Mel and each other when times got tough.  Honestly, we all need a group of gal pals like this.  I know I'd love to have a group of friends like Mel's.  

In the end, How to Hack a Heartbreak was a cute and fun romance that shows you the impossible can happen.  I'd love to see a follow up novel checking back in with the girls and their lives set sometime after this ends.

I enjoyed this book I felt it portrayed the real world of dating and women in the job force. I was happy to see woman surrounding each other for support and in the end they were able to create something meaningful. There is also a little bit of a love story going on.


Fun to read I found myself laughing out loud numerous times.


** I received a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review**

3.5 stars - I enjoyed this cute rom-com! It had a little romance in it, but wasn't anything steamy. I enjoyed reading about Mel's wild adventures with online dating … it makes me so thankful that I don't have to experience any of that fun stuff! It was a nice girl-power type of book, and made for a quick read. I wish the end would've had a little more substance (or length) to it, but overall I did enjoy the story arch & the characters.