BookRec

The idea

You know that feeling when someone hands you a book and says “this made me think of you”? That's one of my favorite feelings in the world, and this summer, I decided to build something to capture it.

It's called BookRec: an app for getting recommendations for books you'll actually read, from people you actually know.

When you finish a book you love, you recommend it directly to a friend you think would love it too. Your friends do the same for you, so your feed becomes a living network of personal recommendations instead of reviews from strangers. And no more losing track of who recommended what: you get “Have Read” and “Want to Read” lists, plus notifications when someone finishes a book you recommended.

It started as a simple problem: I had a lot of time to read this summer and no idea what to read next. I looked at what existed, surveyed 60 friends on what they actually wanted from a book-rec app, sketched it out, then taught myself Base44, Lovable, and Claude to build it. It solved my own “what to read next” problem, and I picked up a new skill set in the process.

Outcomes

BookRec solved my own “what to read next” problem, and is now used by real friend groups tracking books, sending each other recommendations, and following each other's reading activity.

What I learned

I learned as much about building in a crowded space as I did about the tools themselves. BookRec exists alongside plenty of established players (Goodreads, StoryGraph, TikTok/BookTok), so I had to be deliberate about what actually made mine different rather than just another reading tracker. I went through several rounds of iteration to get there. And maybe most importantly, this was proof I could take an idea all the way to a real, working product using AI tools (Lovable, Base44, and Claude) with zero prior technical background.