I built a free app for in-person book clubs and a personalized reading tracker with book recommendations. Looking for feedback!
Web, iOS and Android, all live - try it at https://chapterpals.com/ (also there is a book guessing game, a book tier maker, and a public-facing blog + recommendations engine that lets you add a few books and get suggestions even when not logged in but it's way better in the app with all of your shelves full)
ChapterPals is a reading tracker and a book club app in one. Free, no ads, no paid tier, nothing to buy aside from the books you want. This is a true side project - not trying to turn into a business.
I started it because every book club I've been in went quiet the same way. Not because people stopped reading. Because nobody could agree on the next book, the date drifted, and eventually the group chat did too.
For you
Your shelves, what you're reading now, what you want to read next, what you finished and when.
It suggests what to read next based on what you've actually finished and rated, not on what a publisher paid to put in front of you.
For your club
Anyone can nominate the next book, everyone votes, and the vote has a deadline so it actually closes. The meeting gets a date, a place, RSVPs, calendar invites, and reminders that go out on their own.
Everyone logs where they are in the book, so the club can see who's where without anyone having to ask. It turns "has everyone finished?" from a group chat interrogation into something you just look at.
Discussion threads are gated by chapter. If you're at 40% you cannot see what people at 90% are saying, so nobody has to tiptoe and nobody gets the ending ruined. This is the part I could not find anywhere else.
It works whether or not your club is active, which matters because clubs go quiet and reading doesn't. And it's built for clubs that meet in a room, which turned out to be the gap. Almost everything else in this space assumes you meet online.
Three things I'd genuinely like input on:
- What would make a Goodreads alternative actually useful to you? I want to know what you're missing, not what I think you're missing.
- What killed your book club, if you've been in one? I want to be solving the real thing rather than the thing I assume.
- Is spoiler-gated discussion by chapter something you'd use, or a nice idea that adds friction in practice?