Slowburn Get Slowburn
A window seat at dusk: a wool blanket, a paperback face down with an oxblood ribbon, tea gone cold on the sill.

The app

A reading journal that gets you.

Track your reads. Capture what they did to you. Discover your patterns. Become the reader you’ve always been.

Get Slowburn

Coming to the App Store and Google Play. iPhone first.

Read

A shelf that looks like a shelf.

Every book stands spine-out on a shelf that fills as you read. Ribbons hang from the books you’re inside, tinted from wine to flame by the latest burn. At five, twelve, twenty-five, fifty and a hundred books, the shelf earns a name.

Add a book by searching, by scanning its barcode, or by typing it in. A book without a page count simply tracks in percent.

The Slowburn shelf: rows of book spines with coloured ribbons marking progress.

The journal, in your words.

Status, rating, spice, tropes, moods, the line you keep, the private note nobody else reads. Nothing is suggested to you. Progress is a page or a percent: not a timer, not a streak.

A hand resting on an open paperback with a pencil in the margin and an oxblood ribbon.
A book's journal page: tropes, moods, a line from it, a private note.

The Burn

A candle burned nearly to its end beside a closed book with an oxblood ribbon.

One dial. Five flames. As often as you read.

Cooling. Warm. Burning. Feral. Ruined. Tap the flame that matches how badly the book has you, whenever you pick it up. Slowburn keeps every tap and draws the curve: the slow build, the chapter that ruined you, the cooling after.

When you finish, the curve is named — slow burn, wildfire, flicker, steady, cooled — and becomes a card. The card carries the shape. Never a word you wrote.

The Burn dial with the fifth flame lit and the word Ruined, above a curve of five nights with one book.
A finished book's Burn card, named slow burn, with its curve beside a candle.

Understand

The Stats tab: your reading identity in four shares, the spice gap, mood and trope profiles.

Your reading, read back to you.

Your mood profile, your trope profile, and the spice gap between what you say you want and what you actually finish. Free, and untouched by the paywall.

Reading Identity

Ten insights, each a plain function of your journal: what you reach for, what ruins you, how long you take, how you burn. Every line says which books it came from. No AI, no personality test. One insight is free; Premium opens the rest.

Compare

Enemies-to-lovers against slow burn. Five-star reads against DNFs. Segments built from your own shelf; a verdict only when something genuinely separates the two.

A Reading Identity card: The Held Breath, with heat, pace, what you fall for and a fatal weakness.

Monthly Post-Mortem

A dossier, not a dashboard. The body count. Your type. Structural damage. The one that ruined you. The disappointment. Each numbered section appears only when your month can support it. The opening is free; Premium reads the whole file.

The Monthly Post-Mortem: a proper month, eight books, and the month's numbers over a candle and a rose.

Connect

Two armchairs angled toward each other beside one lamp, a book on each.

A few people you chose. A book read together.

Circle. People you invited one at a time. No public profiles, no followers, no feed. A handle separate from your journal, and only what you hand over: a book, a verdict, a month. Protect it with Apple or Google so it survives a new phone.

Buddy Reads. One person from your circle, one book, two positions. Notes are sealed at the page you leave them and open for the other reader only when their own progress gets there.

Sharing. A review, an identity, a month, a burn: each renders as a card and goes to your phone’s own share sheet. Nothing is uploaded.

Starting a circle: choosing a handle that is separate from the journal.
A Buddy Read invitation and two readers' positions on the same page bar.

Make it yours

Themes, cards, widgets, and a say in what’s next.

Six card families. Marginalia is free. Oxblood, Ember, After Dark, Moonlit and Velvet come with Premium. One layout, one typeface; what changes is the material the card is printed on.

Widgets. One widget, two sizes, iPhone and Android: your current read, where you are in it, the line you saved, and how it’s burning. Tap it and you’re back on the page.

Shape Slowburn. Every reader sees what’s being considered, in the works and shipped. Premium readers vote and send their own ideas. The board is public.

The medium widget: the book's cover with a ribbon, its title and author, a saved line, page position, the burn, and when it was last read.
The small widget: a flame, the book's title and author, the page position, and the burn.

Free

Your complete reading journal.

  • Unlimited books and the whole journal
  • The shelf, search, the barcode scanner
  • Reading progress, the Burn
  • Basic Stats and one Reading Identity insight
  • The opening of every Monthly Post-Mortem
  • Reminders and the widget
  • Circle and Buddy Reads, in full
  • Share cards in the Marginalia family
  • Reading the Shape Slowburn board
  • Every privacy and safety feature

Premium

Deeper interpretation of your reading life.

  • The full Reading Identity, all ten insights
  • Compare: the verdict and the full table
  • The complete Monthly Post-Mortem
  • Five premium card families
  • A vote on Shape Slowburn, and your own ideas on the board

Fourteen days free. Annual or monthly. No lifetime plan. Nothing about privacy or safety is behind the paywall. Pricing

Get Slowburn

Get Slowburn

Coming to the App Store and Google Play. iPhone first.

Questions? Or read the support page.