How to Hack a Heartbreak

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. (July)