ABL Review At-A-Glance
- Title: How to Hack a Heartbreak
- My Rating: 4
- Genre: Fiction, Women’s Fiction
- Author: Kristin Rockaway
- Format: eARC*
- Publication Date: July 30, 2019
Compare To:
Synopsis
Swipe right for love. Swipe left for disaster.
By day, Mel Strickland is an underemployed helpdesk tech at a startup incubator, Hatch, where she helps entitled brogrammers—”Hatchlings”—who can’t even fix their own laptops, but are apparently the next wave of startup geniuses. And by night, she goes on bad dates with misbehaving dudes she’s matched with on the ubiquitous dating app, Fluttr.
But after one dick pic too many, Mel has had it. Using her brilliant coding skills, she designs an app of her own, one that allows users to log harrassers and abusers in online dating space. It’s called JerkAlert, and it goes viral overnight.
Mel is suddenly in way over her head. Worse still, her almost-boyfriend, the dreamy Alex Hernandez—the only non-douchey guy at Hatch—has no idea she’s the brains behind the app. Soon, Mel is faced with a terrible choice: one that could destroy her career, love life, and friendships, or change her life forever.
My Thoughts…
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.
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