StoryGraph is the upgrade that Goodreads forgot to get

By the time Nadia Odunayo launched StoryGraph in 2020, book lovers had already been hankering for a change. Gen Z was already an adult, and with this shift, the generation born with uninterrupted wi-fi was redefining online behaviours. They were done with swiping culture, and were gravitating towards more emotionally resonant online spaces, such as book clubs, in search of friendship. In fact, an NY Post story captured how Gen Z preferred to meet a romantic partner via a reading community versus on a dating app.

This turn towards literature as a common ground for intimacy and connection echoes in digital spaces as well, with people migrating towards book-logging and tracking apps like StoryGraph that provide an intuitive, privacy-first experience to their users. “When I was developing StoryGraph,” says Odunayo, the British-Nigerian founder of the app, “everyone was talking about how burnt out they were from Instagram, and I knew that I didn’t want to build the kind of app that people get burnt out on.” 

It wasn’t just Instagram that was burning people out. Goodreads, the Goliath among book-tracking and reviewing platforms, was creaking under its own weight, offering users little more than a dated experience. Despite its eventual acquisition by Amazon in 2013, the platform remained oddly impervious to user feedback and continued to be riddled with a lack of moderation—to disastrous effect.

It all came tumbling down in 2023, when fantasy author Cait Corrain was caught using a fake Goodreads account to review-bomb debut authors of colour by leaving one-star reviews for their books while boosting her own novel. The fallout was swift for Corrain, who lost her publishing deal, but the damage to Goodreads’ reputation was arguably worse. “Goodreads can be harsh and a bit of a ‘mean girl’ platform,” writes Reddit user RachWarbuton about the platform where many authors from marginalised communities have been targets of review-bombing campaigns.

Enter StoryGraph, which started off as a Goodreads companion that allowed users to track specific reading lists on what Odunayo describes as “a pretty dashboard”, and has now evolved into a reading platform that could serve as a true alternative to Goodreads. 

Odunayo, who studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University, turned down an offer to work at Deutsche Bank after winning a women’s coding bootcamp. This led her into tech, where she was often one of the few women of colour in the room. A Goodreads user since 2012, Odunayo soft-launched StoryGraph in 2019, later bringing on board her co-founder Rob Frelow, who is now the company’s chief AI officer, responsible for its software infrastructure and superb recommendations engine.

Today, StoryGraph has racked up 4 million users, and it’s easy to see why—the platform functions as a soothing reprieve from the chaos of the Goodreads trenches. Its slick, minimalist interface is a calming alternative from its competition’s clunky aesthetic, and its nuanced genre tags, content warnings, and mood filters make the rigid one-to-five-star rating system feel redundant. Didn’t love the book but it wasn’t terrible? Give it 2.75. Absolutely adored the novel but didn’t feel the ending? Maybe 4.75 is a more honest review than a complete 5/5. Readers can also sort their libraries by mood (“reflective,” “tense,” “hopeful”), pacing, and character-versus-plot focus. Did the book make you cry? You can log it here.

“I want to build an app for readers and I’m constantly listening to feedback—and this is where that’s got me,” says Odunayo, who credits the app’s success to making privacy one of its cornerstones. On StoryGraph, there are no comments, no direct messages, and no public follower count that incentivise performative reading. You can also make your reviews private. And those pesky friend-request notifications? They are off by default (unless you manually enable it). Such measures eliminate a set of baked-in dynamics that Odunayo most closely associates with most social media platforms today. “We’re a quiet, safe space for readers, and we’re privacy-first,” she adds.

This gentler approach has won broad appeal with users, who are exhausted by the algorithmic forces that be. “I adore StoryGraph,” writes Reddit user KoreWrites, who loves the platform for “how data driven it is, and [as] someone who got bogged down by the social/marketing aspects of Goodreads, I appreciate the cleaner interface and stat views,” highlighting the app’s tidy pie-chart view of reading habits that users can see. Think of it as a personality test based on your favourite reads.

By making privacy a priority without sacrificing the communal aspects of reading, StoryGraph has captured a demographic. The platform’s ‘buddy reads’ feature allows small, private groups—up to 15 people—to read the same book at the same time. It’s like a virtual book club among friends, where users can leave comments tied to specific pages, which appear to fellow readers only when they reach the relevant part of the book. In short, it allows you to read at your own pace, while still taking part in a shared experience. For larger groups, their ‘Readalongs’ can accommodate up to 1,000 readers, with chapter checkpoints and discussion prompts organised by the host.

If Goodreads feels like the homepage of commercial placements and publishing buzz cycles where celebrity memoirs, Netflix tie-ins, and upcoming titles come pre-loaded with anonymous ratings, StoryGraph, its ad-free nemesis, leaves it to their users to explore what they like. “I don’t need bells and whistles,” says Sam, a London-based StoryGraph user, “I switched from Goodreads in 2023 and honestly haven’t looked back since—this app [StoryGraph] is very instinctive. It sees the way I read, and I like the fact that it’s a woman-owned business and that it’s independent. Also, it’s not trying to upsell me on a Kindle at the end.”

Like Spotify, which has an AI-powered recommendation software that somehow reliably predicts your next favourite earworm, StoryGraph uses its AI-backed machine learning to recommend books that are on-point. Liked Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun? Maybe you should pick up Luminous next. Add to it its nuanced content warning tags for each title, and it guarantees a more pleasurable reading experience. “One thing I’ve really liked are the content warnings on StoryGraph. Goodreads kept recommending books to me that, overall, I did like but many times would have themes that were triggering for me and weren’t apparent in the synopsis at all. So, it’s been nice to check the content warnings in StoryGraph beforehand,” says Reddit user Prior_Imagination197.

Still, the platform isn’t without its share of growing pains: Its database is sparser than Goodreads’, especially when it comes to niche or indie titles, though you can migrate your library from Goodreads to StoryGraph seamlessly. But for most users, therein lies the charm—fewer distractions, an absence of toxicity, more control, and a reading experience that feels both personal and part of a healthy community of readers.

“We will always be reader-first,” confirms Odunayo, who recently logged the seminal Woodward and Bernstein classic All the President’s Men under ‘currently reading’ from her TBR list.

While reading is, primarily, a solitary experience, StoryGraph paves the way for a community of like-minded readers that populate your orbit without crowding your living room or headspace. There’s no competition. No pressure to proffer opinions you’d rather keep to yourself. No black-and-white reviews... Now, how’s the TBR pile?