Features
Everything the journal does. Nothing it pretends to.
Slowburn is a reading journal first. Here is the whole of it, in the order you’ll meet it.
01 Read
Record what you’re reading.
Your shelf
Books as objects, not rows in a list.
Every book you add 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 yourself. A hand-entered book with no page count is a full citizen of the journal: it simply tracks in percent.
Reading journal
Everything the book did to you, in your words.
Status, rating, spice, tropes, moods, the line you keep, the private note nobody else reads. Nothing is written for you or suggested to you. Tropes and moods belong to the read, not the book, so a re-read can feel different and say so.
Reading progress
Where the ribbon sits.
A page number or a percent, whichever the book calls for. It’s local, private and quick to update, and it is deliberately small: not a timer, not a streak, not a session log. Marking a book Finished settles the position. Marking it DNF keeps it, in case you come back.
The Burn
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 right now, 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 — a slow burn, a wildfire, a flicker, steady, cooled — and becomes a card you can share. The card carries the shape and the name. Never a word you wrote.
02 Understand
Discover your reading patterns.
Stats
Counted from your own journal, shown plainly.
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
What kind of reader you are, with receipts.
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 and how many. No AI, no personality test, no conclusion about you as a person.
One insight is free. Premium opens the rest.
Compare
Two of your own habits, side by side.
Enemies-to-lovers against slow burn. Your five-star reads against your DNFs. Every segment is built from your own shelf, needs at least four books a side, and the verdict appears only when something genuinely separates the two. Free readers pick the segments and see the counts. Premium reads the verdict and the full table.
Monthly Post-Mortem
A dossier on your month, not a dashboard.
The body count. Your type. Structural damage. The one that ruined you. The disappointment. What changed. The receipts. Each numbered section appears only when your month can support it. The opening is free; Premium reads the whole file.
03 Connect
Share, with people you chose.
Circle
A few people, invited one at a time.
A circle is the people you let in. No public profiles, no followers, no feed, no comments section, no way for a stranger to find you. You choose a handle that is separate from your journal, and you hand your circle only what you choose: a book, a verdict, a month.
Protect your circle with Apple or Google so it survives a new phone. Delete it whenever you like; your journal is untouched either way.
Buddy Reads
Two of you, inside the same book.
Invite one person to read a book with you. Leave notes along the way at the page you’re on. Each note stays sealed until the other reader’s own progress reaches that page, so nothing is spoiled and nothing is rushed. Not a book club. Not a group chat.
Sharing
A card leaves your phone. Your journal doesn’t.
A review, your Reading Identity, a month, a burn: each renders as a card and goes to your phone’s own share sheet. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. What you share is what you see on the card, and nothing underneath it.
04 Make it yours
Themes, cards, widgets, and a say in what’s next.
Themes and share cards
Six card families, one of them free.
Marginalia is free. Oxblood, Ember, After Dark, Moonlit and Velvet come with Premium. Every family shares one layout and one typeface; what changes is the material the card is printed on.
Shape Slowburn
What gets built next, decided in the open.
Every reader sees what’s being considered, what’s in the works and what shipped. Premium readers vote, and send their own ideas to the board. The founder decides, and says why. It lives in the app and at myslowburn.com/roadmap.
Download Slowburn
Coming to the App Store and Google Play. iPhone first.