For almost five years, I’ve been a die-hard StoryGraph convert. The interactive graphs and reading stats made it easy to wave goodbye to Goodreads, and I’m quick to recommend to any other reader to do the same.
When I first discovered the app in 2021, three years after its launch, I was intrigued by its in-depth reading stats, something which Goodreads did not offer. As well as the standard “how many books have I read this year?” StoryGraph, as the name suggests, created graphs showing my top genres, my most read authors, and my reading “moods,” among other things.
But it’s not only colourful graphs that have convinced readers to make the switch. The mainstream and most popular book tracking app, Goodreads, was bought by Amazon in 2013, which was enough to drive away some readers. It got even worse when Bezos congratulated Trump on his 2024 election win, driving away even more users who felt uncomfortable about this affiliation. For many of them, StoryGraph seemed like the obvious alternative.
As well as its graphs, another unique feature of the app is its AI-powered book reviews and recommendations. I’ll admit, the AI-powered previews are pretty bog-standard, containing information you could most likely obtain from the blurb. But the personalised recommendations are where it gets interesting. StoryGraph draws on your past reading habits and ratings of books to create a short pitch of why you might like a certain book. It’s undeniably a very cool feature, but it has its drawbacks. It is only properly effective when you use the app consistently and rate books accurately. And if you read a more niche or unknown book, it often does not have enough data to generate an AI review.
And yet, StoryGraph still retains the traditional, non-AI generated book previews and reviews from real-life humans. So don’t be put off if AI doesn’t appeal. The features that StoryGraph offers, in my opinion, far surpass those of Goodreads, and it has the added bonus of not being affiliated with Amazon. The only upper hand that Goodreads seems to have is the amount of readers who use it. Obviously, the more users you have, the more reviews you get, and the larger the book community you can generate. However, StoryGraph is by no means small. It has millions of users, and this number is ever-increasing.
Whether you love AI, hate it, or are somewhere in the middle, StoryGraph has features that cater to all. I’ve been saying it since 2021, and I’ll say it again: give StoryGraph a try, you won’t be disappointed.
Photo by Blaz Photo on Unsplash