ARC Review – How to Hack a Heartbreak by Kristin Rockaway

August 1, 2019August 1, 2019 karenjo46Leave a comment

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abouthebook2

Publication Date: July 30, 2019

Publisher: Graydon House

Genre(s): Women’s Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Chick Lit

Format: Paperback, 352 pages

purchaselinks

AMAZON – BARNES AND NOBLE – GOOGLE PLAY – BOOK DEPOSITORY

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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.

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Entertaining, Hilarious, and Wonderfully Empowering

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How to Hack a Heartbreak by Kristin Rockaway is an entertaining, hilarious, and charming rom-com that had me relentlessly flipping through the pages. It’s not only delightful and fun, but also wonderfully empowering. Such an amazing book and I honestly can’t rave about it enough.

With Rockaway’s meaningful and addictive writing style, I found myself utterly captivated with this story. I love that I could feel what the characters feel and sympathize with them. Whether it’s from their awkward dates, misunderstandings, heartbreaks, work troubles, or personal shortcomings, I could relate and feel their emotions. I really love that about this book. The plot is fast-paced and engrossing with the perfect blend of drama, angst, wit, conflict, and the amazing ups and painful downs of finding love in a digitally driven world. I adore the characters and wanted to be best friends with them. The romance is not really the main focus, but I still enjoyed it. The last few chapters are definitely my favorite and had me tearing up a few times. There’s also a few scenes that had me cheering, smiling, and just overwhelmed with positivity. I really enjoyed this novel and the ending is fantastic – it’s hopeful, profound, and touching.

I love Melanie and her girlfriends. They’re quirky, determined, talented, witty, loving, and incredibly supportive. They’re such strong and independent women and I think they’re all just so inspiring and admirable. Their friendship is endearing and one of the things I adore about this book. I really enjoyed seeing them have fun, take chances, find love, and most importantly empower each other.

I like the romance aspect of the story. It doesn’t sizzle off the page, but the chemistry between Mel and Alex feels realistic and relatable. I definitely rooted for them early on and even if there aren’t too many swoony moments between them, I think they’re just so cute and great together.

Riveting and heartfelt, How to Hack a Heartbreak is fun and addictive and one of my favorite reads this summer. The writing is superb, the characters are lovable and fierce, and the plot is humorous, bold, and inspiring. Kristin Rockaway absolutely captured my heart with this amazing story about strong female friendship, empowerment, love, and the importance of in person connections and relationships. This truly has been a joy to read and I think you should definitely add this gem on your TBR.

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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(Mini bio and photo taken from author’s website)

kristinrockaway

Kristin Rockaway is a native New Yorker and recovering corporate software engineer. After working in the IT industry for far too many years, she finally traded the city for the surf and chased her dreams out to Southern California, where she spends her days happily writing stories instead of code. When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time with her husband and son, browsing the aisles of her neighborhood bookstores, and planning her next big vacation.

Her second novel, How to Hack a Heartbreak, will be released from Graydon House/HarperCollins on July 30, 2019. Her debut, The Wild Woman’s Guide to Traveling the World, is in stores now.

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WEBSITE – GOODREADS – TWITTER – INSTAGRAM – AMAZON – BOOKBUB

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Hope you enjoyed reading my review and get to meet Melanie and her sassy girlfriends. I really enjoyed this story and cannot wait to read more from Kristin Rockaway.

Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.

sincerelykjologo

ARC Review – Will You Won’t You Want Me? by Nora Zelevansky

July 27, 2019August 1, 2019 karenjo46Leave a comment

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I have a really BIG problem when it comes to buying books, downloading freebies, requesting ARCs on Netgalley, accepting author review requests, participating on book blog tours, and joining book giveaways that I have a TON of books/arcs to last me a lifetime. I’m not even exaggerating and I’m seriously doubting I’ll ever get to read them all. BUT, I love reading and I just can’t resist all these wonderful book beauties!!!

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This segment is dedicated to all the ARCS and books I’ve won from the Goodreads Giveaway program from the previous years. I’ll review the current year wins separately cause I just want to focus on the ones that have been sitting on my shelves for a lonngggg time. Honestly, I don’t win very often (maybe once or twice every few months), but I still somehow managed to acquire plenty of books over the past few years. My TBR for this has surprisingly gotten long, so here I am trying to read, review, and knock off as many books as I can from this list. I’ve reviewed a few of them (I know I know shame on me), so this will only focus on what I haven’t read… which is a lot… like 90% of them. So enough chit chat for now and let’s get started shall we?!?

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Giveaway Dates: Mar 09 – Mar 28, 2016 – Copy Received: Thu, Apr 07 2016.

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Published: April 19th 2016

Pubisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Genre(s): Women’s Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Chick Lit

Pages: Paperback 320

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purchaselinks

AMAZON – BARNES AND NOBLE – GOOGLE PLAY – BOOK DEPOSITORY

synopsis

Marjorie Plum never meant to peak in high school. She was Queen Bee. Now, 10 years later, she’s lost her sparkle. At her bleakest moment, she’s surprised by renewed interest from a questionable childhood crush, and the bickering with her cranky boss—at a potentially game-changing new job—grows increasingly like flirtatious banter. Suddenly, she’s faced with a choice between the life she always dreamed of and one she never thought to imagine. With the help of a precocious 11-year-old tutee, who unknowingly becomes the Ghost of Marjorie Past, and a musician roommate, who looks like a pixie and talks like the Dalai Lama, Marjorie struggles with the ultimate question: Who does she want to be? Nora Zelevansky’s Will You Won’t You Want Me? is a funny, often surprising, novel about growing up when you are already supposed to be grown.

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Actual rating 1.5ish

Just won! So excited to receive my giveaway copy. Can’t wait to read and review. =)

Well, that was such a long time ago when I wrote how excited I was to read this… And I really was. BUT, I just didn’t like the main character, Marjorie and when I can’t connect with the MC, it’s really difficult for me to enjoy the story.

I had to put this down multiple times. I mean I would pick it up, read a few pages here and there and then lose interest. I’d revisit it again after a few weeks or months and still I’d feel the same way. I just could not really get into the story. I liked the writing style and the plot (from what I’ve read so far) has its funny and entertaining moments, but I really didn’t feel engaged or intrigued. I don’t know if that would have changed if I actually finished the book. What I do know is that the story felt dreary and flat to me. I DNF’ed after about 30%

I’m quite sad that this book never really made me feel anything and I really don’t like to DNF books, but this is just not my cup of tea.

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher via a Goodreads Giveaway. All thought sand opinons are my own.

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abouttheauthor

noraz Nora Zelevansky is a novelist, journalist, essayist and editor.

As a freelance writer, she covers all things lifestyle, particularly travel, fashion, wellness/beauty and funny cultural trends. Her work has appeared in publications including ELLE, Vanity Fair, Town & Country, T Magazine (The New York Times), Travel + Leisure, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, SELF, Salon.com, The Daily Beast and The Washington Post. She is the editorial director for style-driven wellness hub, Live The Process.

Zelevansky’s novels are delayed coming-of-age stories. Inspired by her fascination with the universal struggle to let go of the past and reimagine oneself again and again in life, the stories — told with honesty, humor and a bit of romance — follow characters who resist change as they navigate periods of grudging transition: college graduation, the approach to 30, even death.

Zelevansky attended New York City’s Calhoun School, then Scripps College of The Claremont Colleges in California. After graduation, she moved to LA to work in film development & acquisitions and then in politics, before transitioning into freelance writing.

She currently lives in Brooklyn, NYC with her husband, two kids and enormous cat, Waldo.

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