Show HN: FicScout – Like Goodreads, but see books rated by characters, plot etc.

Hey HN, I’m Jake. I know this isn't for work or AI tool like most other products on here, but hopefully this will bring some joy and adventure to your personal life.

I used to spend hours combing Goodreads and Reddit to see if I’d actually like a book before I commit to buying it and reading it. A single number for the rating, like 4.37 stars, wasn’t really helpful because everybody values different things (characters, plot, writing, etc). And the reviews were most helpful, but reading them all took a bunch of time and I’d often run across spoilers.

So for over a year I kept a spreadsheet rating every book I read on what actually decided whether I liked it. For me, that’s mostly characters, plot, ending, and twists.

I thought this was actually helpful, unlike a single rating, plus it was super fun to rate books this way. So I built Fic Scout, a way for everybody to rate books based on these categories and then help you find your next book.

Of course, the new features are growing and growing: you can now save a TBR list, play a fantasy book/wordle game, and we’ve built a book recommendation engine. But building is fun, and books are fun, so here we go.

Question for HN: when you pick your next fiction book, what’s actually most important to you in a book? Plot, characters, prose, ending? Something else?