How to Hack a Heartbreak

April 8, 2019
Rockaway (The Wild Woman’s Guide to Traveling the World) delivers a sharp and funny tale of female empowerment with a side order of romance. Four years after college, programmer Melanie Strickland is still working the helpdesk at a New York City start-up incubator called Hatch. The only good things about her job fixing laptops for ungrateful male chauvinist “Hatchlings” are the paycheck, benefits, and a cute programmer named Alex Hernandez. After yet another crappy online dating meetup goes wrong, Mel creates JerkAlert, a site where women can warn others about online daters who are rude, thoughtless, lying, or sexist. While she begins a tentative romance with Alex, JerkAlert goes viral and Mel dreams of starting a company. But she’ll need to challenge a world that still believes “girls can’t code” and find her own way to success—in business and in love. Rockaway creates an entertaining, if somewhat black-and-white, world of high-tech winners and losers, from Mel’s indomitable girlfriends to the rapacious businessmen in her way. A brisk plot and Mel’s determination will see readers through to the triumphant finish. Agent: Jessica Watterson, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

May 15, 2019
By day, Melanie Strickland works the help desk at Hatch, a New York City start-up incubator, where she fields calls from demeaning and disrespectful techies with various computer issues, all the while knowing she's better than that. By night, she goes on bad date after bad date, aided by the online dating app, Fluttr. After being stood up?and one unsolicited dick-pic too many?she decides to take matters into her own hands. She creates a website, JerkAlert.biz, where users can alert fellow singletons about guys who are no good. Mel is not prepared, however, for the site to go viral overnight. Rockaway's sophomore work (The Wild Woman's Guide to Traveling the World, 2017) is as sexy as it is topical. Providing a peek into the world of twentysomethings dating in the digital age and (s)wiping out, the fast-paced tale will have readers laughing and celebrating as Mel shows what she's made of in the worlds of romance and tech. Perfect for lovers of Doree Shafrir's Startup (2017) and Hannah Orenstein's Playing with Matches (2018).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)