Storivie started because my life is chaotic, and I refuse to let reading get lost in the chaos.
I’m a mom and wife. I juggle multiple jobs, run a small farm… but somehow still manage to read around 100 books a year. (Notice “sleep” is not in the list of things I do.) Reading has been one of my biggest passions for as long as I can remember. My dad taught me to read using The Hobbit when I was about five years old (yes, really), and I never looked back.
I’ve picked up plenty of other loves along the way: horses, photography, music, travel. But books have always been at the very top, quietly letting me wander other worlds in the background of my busy life.
Sadly, somewhere along the way, managing my reading started becoming its own job.
Between my never-ending TBR, piles of screenshot recommendations, incomplete series lists, books I’d already read, and everything else, keeping up with it all was starting to feel like…work. And something as beautiful as disappearing into other worlds should never come with a chore attached.
No other app on the market felt right for the way I read, and, believe me, I tried them all. The features I wanted just weren’t there, too many of the books I looked up had incorrect or incomplete information, and they just didn’t feel right. Eventually, I stopped trying to make the existing options work for me and decided to build the thing I kept wishing existed.
I didn’t want another place that made me spend more time researching and organizing books. I wanted something that would get the tracking out of the way so I could get back to reading - one place for my entire reading life.
I wanted my series in order, connected universes to actually be connected, and books that aren’t out yet already waiting where they belong. I wanted to add books without making a project out of it, find my next read without digging through a ridiculous TBR, and share the books I love without turning reading into another social feed.
So, I built a private little tracker with the quaint name of “Samantha’s Shelf”.
What I didn’t expect is that when my bookish friends started seeing it, they wanted it for themselves. And I realized that maybe I wasn’t the only reader who’d been wishing for this.
That little personal shelf seed eventually grew into Storivie.
The name is personal, too. I’m Welsh and French, so Storivie combines the Welsh stori with the French vie: story life.
I hope you love what I’ve built as much as I loved creating it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support as we journey through story worlds together.
SamanthaFounder, Storivie