Now in beta · iPhone
LoRe learns your taste from the books you've actually read, not your genre history or what's trending. Mood search, a taste twin, and recommendations that tell you why — built by one reader, for readers.
◯ What you usually get
You: "something that feels like the quiet devastation of Kazuo Ishiguro"
◆ What LoRe gives you
Matched on emotional payoff, pacing, and prose style — not keywords.
Stoner — John Williams
You'll love this: the same restrained heartbreak and quiet inevitability you responded to in "Never Let Me Go," in a completely different setting.
The idea
Not by a person — by an extraction pass that pulls out mood, pacing, prose style, and emotional payoff from the book itself. Your taste profile is built the same way, from what you've actually rated, not a shelf you clicked once. Then the two get matched against each other, not against what's popular this week.
Search how you want to feel — "something for a long, quiet evening" — instead of picking from a fixed list of genres.
Matched with another reader who shares your actual taste, based on books you've both logged — not follower counts or a quiz.
One pick chosen specifically to stretch your taste into something new, with an honest explanation of why it bridges — not a random wildcard.
A live, anonymous space tied to the exact book you're reading — so people say what they actually think, not what reads well under their name.
A taste-personality summary built from your real reading history, plus a shareable card — not a generic year-end stats dump.
The unglamorous part
Most of the work nobody sees: stripping out box sets and omnibus editions that were polluting search, fixing series numbering across duplicate editions so "next in series" means next, backfilling real synopses for books that had nothing but a bare title. None of it is interesting to build. All of it is why the recommendations hold up.
Why I built this
I kept asking apps — and AI directly — for a book recommendation and getting matched by trope or by author, no matter how specific I was about what I actually wanted. That's not a recommendation, that's a lookup table.
LoRe is what I wished existed instead: something that actually learns from what you've read, not what's popular or what sounds similar on paper. It's in beta right now, tested by a small group of real readers, and every bug report so far has come from someone who cared enough to tell me what wasn't working. That matters more to me than almost anything else about this.
— the person building LoRe, one reader at a time
Ready when you are
Free during beta. Takes about five minutes to get a real feel for it.
Not on iPhone, or not ready yet? Leave your email and I'll let you know when there's more to try.
Got it. I'll let you know.