TBR - Bookshelf
reviews and complaints

So when I first downloaded this app I was really excited because I saw the video on Tiktok of how easy it was to keep track of all the books that you want to read and or have read and also the setup was cute. So I thought let’s give it ago. But the fact you have to pay for this app is ridiculous, you are able to input one book and then boom you have to pay for it. That’s unreal. At this point people just use Goodreads it’s free and they actually have all the books inputted already so you don’t have to do it yourself.

I love the idea of the app, and the goal page with the visual bookshelf is really fun. I also like the unique rating system, although it was clearly designed with the romance genre in mind and not much else (I’m not sure how to rate a memoir I read on a predictability scale…). Unfortunately, the paid subscription is too costly for me, especially when there are so many free apps out there that offer the same features at no cost. I do enjoy the base features, but I’ll probably stick to Storygraph as my main reading tracker.

The app was definitely designed by someone who wants to thoroughly rate their books and made it fun and very aesthetic. I love how you can see the books you have read and it’s a goal to actually look at.
One thing I would really like to see is a larger database for the books. I input more books than I don’t.
The second page of the rating part is also frozen and will not work. This is very frustrating after paying for the pro package. I would really hate to delete the app and restart for this issue but it is annoying at best.

I’m enjoying this app. I just came across it. I love how I’m able to organize and rate my books. Would love it even more if I’m able to save my progress and all the input I have entered. So far I have the free version but the only reason I don’t pay for the subscription. Is just incase I lose my phone, I won’t lose all that money I have spent on the app. But as soon as they have a back up. I would pay for the subscription. :) Also I would like to see the book pages on the rating section. So I can have a visual on how many pages were on the book.

My star rating will go up as I use the app. I did just install it.
I am so far finding that when I am looking up books and reading what they are about the text is not able to be enlarged by stretching my screen as I would usually do when reading tiny text. If this could be fixed or enlarge the standard text you are using I’m hands down loving the app with no complaints. But with such tiny text on my bad eyes would be the only reason I would stop using it so far. Please enlarge or allow the images to be manipulated so that my phone can enlarge it. Thanks!

When I saw this app on tiktok I immediately fell in love with it. I have been trying for months to get back into reading and creating a TBR without being a hassle. I enjoyed the app at first until I realized that in order to see titles and make it aesthetically pleasing to the eye, I had to pay for everything. I wish there were at least a few free options for things and then if you wanted more you had to pay. But the fact that it’s just plain and grey unless I pay is upsetting…

And it would be cool to se other people’s ratings. (I know it’s already been said multiple times but it would be a really cool feature.)

This app works great. The set up and look is really nice. I do have some suggestions :

I think a feature you could add to the Currently Reading section is an option where you can change the format of the book. There would be “total book time” rather than “total book pages”. I think that would be more accurate for audiobooks.

Also, adding a tutorial option in settings would help, especially for first time users.

Lastly, an option to favorite books that we read.

There is some occasional crashing that happens, I’m not sure why. Hopefully that can be resolved.

Other then that, the app is wonderful, with lots of useful features. I think the rating feature is almost perfect. I would definitely recommend.

I love this app because I borrow and return a lot of books with kindle unlimited and then often forget the names and potentially want to re-read one. I’m just wondering if the selection of books is going to expand. I like that I can add my own if they aren’t on there but I feel like I’m having to manually add a ton which isn’t ideal.

I would like to see maybe a search bar in the read section. To not only look up books but the notes made on a book. If you are trying to find a book based off something you maybe wrote in the notes section of the review but don’t remember the name of the book itself. This would be crucial because you often remember a key part of a book and likely noted that but when you try to look up a book based on that on the internet it probably won’t show up. But you would be able to find it here.

Hello! I am new to book tracking, but did some deep dives on other apps and ultimately chose this on despite some of its down falls.
- There should be a way to organize your Tbr’s into categories or an order from most egar to read down to the least. I just don’t like how they are jumbled.
- I like how other apps have word tracking, it’s cool to be able to see how many words you’ve read collectively between books.
- I wish we could pick more than one genre when rating because I feel like some fall into multiple.
-I don’t necessarily want it to be public, but at least have the ability to sign in and save progress as well as send it to select friends.
- the option of leaving our reviews private but having a public forum in which we can discuss books!
Otherwise, I have enjoyed tracking my books and jotting down my thoughts!

I’ve already left my raving review and now I have some constructive criticism for the developers! #1 For a series I’d love for there to be an options for putting the whole series in your TBR and/or read list with one button and to somehow keep them in order when looking at them so it’s prettier and more organized! #2 I would love a way to see other peoples reviews on books! #3 I would love some sort of sign in option so I don’t have to worry about losing anything if my phone breaks. #4 I love to genre option but most of what I read is fantasy/romance and thriller/romance. When reviewing I’m only given an option to choose one genre and I would love it if I could pick multiple! And lastly I’d like to say that for the app being so new it’s still a hit! And I understand all of what I’ve said above is probably being worked on for future updates! I’ll just be here patiently waiting :)! Great work!

Amazing app love the concept of it. I love the aesthetic of the whole thing. Specially love the rating and annotations. A few things I would either update or add.

When books are entered adding a Kids, YA or Adult genre on them.

Book spice rating

A better search feature. Currently its very difficult to find the book you are looking for. A lot of people seem to be adding their own name as the author and not the book author, so searching by author doesnt work too well.

When you search something, it seems to pull up anything that has any letters that are used.

When you look up a book in a series having an option to view all the books in the series. (This would be easier to add a whole series to read or your tbr)

Would be nice to add friends and view their tbr/read books or profile.

Overall I will keep using this app as ai find it more visually appealing then others and I cant wait to see where it goes.

I’ve had this app for several months now. I used it to track all my reading for 2022 and now this year. I love how the bookshelf helps me visualize my goal and keep track of what I’ve already accomplished. My only complaint is the color of the books on the shelf. Both in 2022 and 2023 the books are numbered in gray and as you read the title of the book replaces a number and the color of the book change, however I dislike how the color is still so close to a gray tone. It’s beige, or dull pink, or dull blue, or even sometimes stays gray. At first glance they blend with the numbered spaces so much I can’t enjoy the progress I’m making on my shelf. You can pay for new colors, and I would if it was a one time purchase to unlock colors, but paying a monthly fee to unlock colors is crazy. I just wish the basic color scheme was not in the gray family. I don’t need fancy, but I also don’t see the point in the shelf when the colors are so close.

I had the free version of this app for a couple of days and immediately subscribed for the extra paid features because I am loving the app! There are SO many options for adding information about the books you’re reading — way more than other apps I’ve used.

The only thing I’d love to see be updated is when adding newly read books to your reading goal shelf for this year, the books going to the bottom / end of the shelf (I hope that makes sense). I input all of my read books from the start of the year to now but had to do it backwards (Oct—>Jan) so that the books I read first this year were at the top, but NOW when I add a new book it goes right in front of what should be #1 on my shelf… which makes it seem like I read it early this year instead of being #55 like it should be… ya know? (I really hope this makes sense) lol!

Another feature I’d love is an option to mark off what version(s) of the book you own because sometimes I have a kindle AND physical copy, or audio AND physical copy… because yes, I have issues lol

Anyway. This is just me looking for things that could be improved because other than those things, I am so pleased with this app!

I’ve been using TBR for over a year now and I absolutely love it! I have a few suggestions tho. I would really like a way to log in or save my data. I would be seriously upset if my phone broke and I lost all my notes and reviews and what not. Another thing I keep accidentally doing is when I look at my reading goal I keep trying to click on the titles to open up the reviews and thats not how it works. Maybe that could be a feature in the future? I really like how each book has its own color when you log it. When I’m looking at my read section I wish there was a way to organize it. Right now its every single book I’ve ever logged and if I wanted to find a book review for a book I read say in May I would have to scroll all the way down. I would like if there was a way to sort by year or month. Over all though I am the biggest fan of this app. Especially with how much content you can access with just the free version. I am looking forward to buying the premium version and updating all my reviews! I feel like the app is simple enough that adding a review doesn’t feel like a chore (like on other tracking apps). Though it would be cool if there was a way to share your reviews with friends/be able to view other peoples reviews.

So far I am loving this app! Especially the review area where I can keep up with different tropes and add in quotes and things about the book I liked.
I’ve read through some of the other reviews and agree that it would be nice to have more than one genre option since several of the books I read fall into more than one. I also like the idea of adding a whole series at once to your TBR and classifying as YA, adult, etc.

I would love to see a feature that allows you to track advanced reader copies. Such as when the release date is, when the arc was delivered, what PR company is promoting it (or is it the author/authors PA), and then maybe a way to mark them off as completed. Such as reviews posted to Amazon, Goodreads, IG, etc. Then it’s marked as completed once you’ve filled out and submitted your review links form.
After it can be added to your “read” list.
I haven’t found an app yet that allows for arc tracking or if they do it’s complicated and/or has an outrageously high subscription cost. I’m currently using an excel spreadsheet to keep track of them but I don’t always have access to it so having an app that could do this would be amazing!
(Maybe even do it in a separate app if not within this one?)

Otherwise I’m happy with this app and will continue to use it daily!

I found this app a few months ago while looking for a place I could track the books I’ve read this year. This app is amazing! You can search through books, add books to your TBR list, bookmark the books your currently reading, and my track the books you’ve already read, plus you can set a reading goal.

The TBR tab is really helpful because you can add books to the list easily, without having to have have the physical book. It makes it super easy to figure out books I want to buy!

One thing I absolutely love about this app is the ‘goal’ tab, where you can set a reading goal for the year. It also includes a digital book shelf that shows all the book titles on a bookshelf (it’s super cute).

I love the way you can write a review for each book. You can choose the overall rating, and there are sub categories in which you can rate the book (ex. horror, romance, fantasy, mystery, young adult, etc). Personally, I read romance a lot, and some of the rating categories are: spice, fluff, tear, and humor. Some of the rating questions they ask are: ‘would you read this book again?’, ‘favorite character’ and ‘favorite quotes.’

However, there are quite a few things that are reserved for pro-users only. Some of the pro features include: inputting the page number your on, adding annotations, and a few things in the rating section (ex. season, adaptations, hype rating, POV, trope tracker and the book playlist). But, I do understand that the developers have to make money somehow.

Overall, TBR - Bookshelf makes it really easy for me to track the books I’ve read, rate books, set goals, and add books to my TBR. The developers of this app are amazing! Thank you so much!

I absolutely LOVE the concept of this! But I think the app is so new, that it’s got a lot of bugs to work out. Firstly, if you want to add a whole series, you can’t. You have to add each individual book, and then there’s no way to tell which book is first or last. Secondly, if the books are really new or haven’t come out yet, but have a release date, they’re not on there. You also can’t make a profile or see others ratings. You can custom add books but, if it’s too much to keep up with what new books are coming out and all the release dates, maybe there could be a way for the creators to see what individual books people are adding and they could get added to the search list that way? Like maybe when someone custom adds a book, there’s an option to also send it to be reviewed and added to the search list? I always want to keep up with any new upcoming books, but it’s a lot to go through my tbr as it is. So maybe there could be a way to add a book that will be released, add the release date and I would LOVE to get a notification when it’s getting close for the book to come out and when it does come out. There’s also no way to organize your tbr. It’s just a huge jumble of books. Again, it would be beyond helpful to be able to put books into series groupings. It would also be nice if we could edit the descriptions. I definitely like the ones from kindle that are much more detailed. All this being said, I really want this app to work! I’ve been using my notes on my phone to keep up with my tbr and would love a much more organized way of looking through them. I don’t see it being worth all the time and effort to add all my tbr books to this app till it’s a little better. I’ll keep it downloaded and watch for any updates. I’d even love to join pro if a lot of the stuff above got added/fixed. Right now, it’s just more trouble than it’s worth.

Maybe if it was a one time purchase. But even so, $30 is too much. I’ll stick with Goodreads and Storygraph.

Five minutes into using it before realizing most the books I’ve read, aren’t in their database and you CANNOT add them in.
Such a disappointment.

Nice app, but it freezes when you try to edit the date you started and finished a book. I would like this fixed before I commit to the subscription. Thanks

I like the idea of this app, and would love an alternative to Goodreads, but I don’t like how all the ratings aren’t public. I don’t see much of a point to in-depth book ratings if they are individualized

I love the look of this app. I hate that the first 5 books I tried to add weren’t in the catalog and there is no way to manually add them. I will not use until this is fixed. I think adding “date read” would also help so it can stay in order. I am a heavy read (my goal is 315 this year) and like to track my books meticulously.

I love the layout, the setup, the ease of use and the cute bookshelf graphic.

However, the lack of a sign in option makes this pretty much unusable for me as I switch devices often. Additionally, the fact that the “date finished” defaults to the current day is a small annoyance, especially if I am trying to add previously read items.

It’s a great idea but the actual outcome fell a bit short.
Possible improvements:
- updated the titles (books that came out months/weeks ago still aren’t on it)
- wish there was a way to rearrange TBR to put it in a certain order otherwise it’s not much different that good reads. For example being able to drag certain books to the top.
-the ability to link entire series together

Saw an ad on TikTok and downloaded the app. While being a super cute App and I’m looking forward to using it…unfortunately the adjust read dates isn’t working so unless I remember to start using it again at the end of the year, it just doesn’t make sense for me to use this app at this point in the year if I can’t adjust the read dates. It also seems to freeze when I do try to adjust the read dates.

I was using tbr for 3 months now but had to stop as the app kept closing by itself, and the books I had in my tbr for some of them would come up as having not existed even if I put it in manually or just searched it up. It was doing it more and more frequently too so I finally gave up and went back to the other reading apps I was using.
Overlll I do like it and the design but It’s just having too many bugs