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.

This was a quick and cute read, and it’s books like this one that are making me like the New Adult genre more and more.  Probably because it’s relatable.

One aspect about this book that I liked was the accuracy in which the workplace was portrayed.  Mel works with tech start-ups, aka: the new app developers looking to come up with the latest trending app for users, and she’s essentially their backbone – working at the help desk to fix their computer problems and such.  However, because she’s a woman, they don’t believe in her ability to code or fix things properly, which is very infuriating for Mel (and readers).  Half of the time I was wishing I could jump into the book and clock some of these guys that mistreated Mel.

The story focuses more on Mel being fed up with online dating and how men treat women through the app (sending inappropriate messages, ghosting them, etc.).  So she creates her own app/website called JerkAlert where women can warn others of some of these guys by posting their profile information and how they were, well, jerks.  JerkAlert goes viral, however, it begins to cause some complications with Mel’s new sort-of relationship with one of the start-up guys, Alex.

I’m not going to give anything away, but I was somewhat disappointed in how things went the story.  Don’t get me wrong, it still ended well, I just was hoping for a different approach to how it got there.  I did also enjoy Mel’s group of friends, especially Whit because she’s just that firecracker friend that we all need in our lives.

So, all in all… How to Hack a Heartbreak was a good read and I recommend it!

Rating: 3/5 stars