JoyRead User Reviews

Customer Experience

Positive experience44.4% of reviews
Neutral8.7% of reviews
Negative experience46.9% of reviews

~ Based on 2,008 written reviews from the US App Store.

What users say

Is JoyRead Safe?

JoyRead-Enjoy Novels & Shorts appears safe based on user ratings. AppsHunter Safety Score for JoyRead is 92/100.

This assessment is based on 23,148 user ratings, with an App Store average of 4.6/5.

Safety Analysis

90.2% of ratings point to a safe experience
2.9% of ratings suggest some concerns
6.8% of ratings point to a risky experience

~ Based on 23,148 App Store ratings for JoyRead.

Is JoyRead Legit?

JoyRead-Enjoy Novels & Shorts appears to be a legitimate app. AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for JoyRead is 93/100.

Based on 93 of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data.

Top reviews

Too many bugs and glitches

I love the stories, but there are to many glitches with rewards not working on various tasks across the day. If it wasn’t for the fact that I am already into the story, I would have deleted the app. Also too many tasks to complete.

Mauvaise qualité de français

Les livres sont mal traduits, manquent de sérieux, la mise en page est tellement mal faite que ça nuit à la compréhension des dialogues et l’application coûte bien trop cher. De plus, lorsqu’on souhaite lire sans payer il faut ouvrir/lire une bonne quinzaine de pubs par chapitre.

Forced to pay for short stories

This app requires payment to read the stories labeled ‘short.’ That’s ridiculous!

Not worth it

Better off with a good old fashioned book or kindle. At least they’re only a few quid and not fortunes for a book…,,,honestly like robbery unless you want to go to 3 websites giving away your data and stuff

Charged me weekly without my consent

I made a one-time purchase in the amount of $9.99 for access to a story, quickly realized this app is a scam, and deleted it. Since then I’ve been fraudulently charged $29.99 on a weekly basis, without having ever signed up for a subscription. The app gives you no option to cancel a recurring charge or delete your account, and even contacting the designated support email requesting a cancellation yielded no response and I’ve continued to be charged.
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Steals in app currency

After unlocking chapters I have gone back into stories to find the chapters locked again. And to make things worse it has a bad habit of auto spending your app currency to unlock what it wants when you go into your story. So I have already wasted currency unlocking chapters that should have already been unlocked.
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They LOVE to cheat you!

The stories are great. The ‘pearls and coins’ not really expensive- you can get by with like $5 pack once a month if you don’t mind looking at ads. BUT, if they screw up, it is IMPOSSIBLE TO GET THE PEARLS AND COINS BACK THEY STOLE FROM YOU. They want you to SCREENSHOT (me it was 14 chapters). AND WE ALL KNOW THAT SCREENSHOTS AREN’T ALLOWED. Crooks- that’s what they ar really. Help Center is NO HELP.
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Disappointing

Added app after reading part of an interesting story in an ad.

App forces you to read articles, take silly personality tests and have tarot readings just to open a single chapter. Even after you jump through those hoops, it tells you “so close” & forces you into another round of articles that I would otherwise avoid.

I’ve given up hope of finishing the story & am deleting the app.
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Refund

I WANT MY GOT DANG REFUND HOW DARE YOU RESET AFTER I SPENT ALMOST 40$ on my chapters you took my book my account everything I still have receipts I know where my money went got dang it you owe me

Customer service sucks.

I was charged for a subscription package and then never received it or any other information for why it didn’t show up in the app. I reached out to customer service and kept getting asked to “wait to be transferred.”

Books take forever to finish and the HD audio is a joke

don’t start a book until it’s actually finished. Because it could take months if not longer for the author actually to finish it. I’ve also started listening to some of the books on the HD audio however partway through the book. The HD audio disappears. on top of that the majority of the books on the HD audio tab do not have HD audio.
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No stars if I could

Don't expect to read on this app if you don't intend to pay to read.
After the first initial free chapters everything is add based. Their add offers are a hell scape of unclear instructions, adds disguised as links, pop up add videos within the offer, incomplete links and offers that will not complete even when you do EVERYTHING right.
Their customer service DOES NOT CARE and WILL blow you off with constant cheerful requests to end the session as they have solved your problem by insisting that you must simply follow the links to complete the offer and not be distracted by the pop ups. As if this is user error and your fault.
Said Custer service claimed their agents were unavailable for the weekend and made me wait only to behave more like an AI chat bot. Apparently AI needs the weekend off now. Either that or their chat support agents are HORRIBLE at their job.
Even if the story quality was impeccable (which it is far from. Likely AI or poor translations from foreign language.) it would NOT be worth this!!!
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Too much B.S.

It’s garbage. There are a couple stories I’m trying to follow, but every chapter turns out to be about 2 paragraphs of a real book. I’ve just run into almost 15 “chapters” of rambling on garbage rehashing the exact same points, just in several different ways. You can’t trust purchasing pearls, the last time I did I had a few hundred left after getting to the completed post of the book I’m reading, and they expired about 3 days before releasing 200 more 3 sentence chapters. Now chapters have gotten up to 50 pearls per, and the ads are still only 5 per. Checking in every day I only get to read 2 chapters every 3 days. Every ad takes about 3-5 minutes, and every chapter takes about 30 seconds to read. So you spend an hour watching all the ads, to read for 30 seconds to a minute. Twice I’ve ran into back to back chapters that were IDENTICAL! As in they accidentally put up the same chapter as the previous. Just go to the library and get a real book, at least you know THAT book is finished.
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Rewards Are Awful

I am enjoying the story I am reading. However it is extremely frustrating the hoops I have to go through to open one chapter. I always have to read 2 articles that is actually opening 20 tabs of ‘articles’. And even then you don’t always get the coin or pearl to open a chapter. I spend more time trying to open a chapter than I do reading a chapter. I am close to just deleting the app. I am only on chapter 54 of 934. It will be 1 year by the time I finish this novel if I have to open 20+ tabs for each chapter.
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Major flaws in app design

The stories are great don’t get me wrong but the app itself has major flaws.
1. Half the time ads/rewards aren’t measured equally (in one place it’s worth one thing and worth another amount somewhere else)
2. Adds don’t play 90% of the time (even with 3 bars of both cellular and Wi-Fi). so in order for the app to even have half its functionality you need really good connection to both.
3. The app requires at the very least 3 bars of 5g cellular in order to watch adds(even then it gives me a hard time)
4. The frustration from inability based on lack of cellular is enough to literally drive someone to the brink: insanity, depression, you name it.
5. Unless you are rich and pay your way through,(I’m not) you are lucky to read 4 chapters of the same book per day and half of that would be gained through (you guessed it) : ads!!!
The same thing that doesn’t work 90% of the time.

Stories = addicting
App = insanity/depression

Did I mention that by not using your ad paid for chapters they are reset the next day (2 a day, no rollover)
12:00am everything resets.
Definitely needs help. To those as frustrated as me, I would recommend WEBTOON it’s 100%free (occasional ads)
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Good catalog, but VIP audio is inconsistent

Solid selection of completed and ongoing werewolf/romance serials, and the annual/monthly pass model beats paying coin-by-coin on other apps. My main complaint: VIP-tier audio narration doesn’t consistently cover full books, even completed ones — it can cut out partway through and force you back to the lower-quality basic AI voice, with no way to manually switch back.

The fallback audio itself has functional issues beyond just sounding worse: there’s no pause between the chapter title and the actual text, and sentences often run together with no breaks, like it’s reading one long unbroken sentence instead of separate ones. It makes chapters genuinely hard to follow and often means re-listening to catch what was actually said. If VIP is the premium tier, it should reliably deliver premium narration for the content you’re paying to access — and the free fallback shouldn’t be this hard to understand in the first place. Three stars until both issues are addressed.
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Not good

I don’t like that you need to earn something to be able to read every chapter

Terrible

Glitchy and to expensive , avoid

Cancelled a short reads subscription and still got charged again

I wanted to finish a story I started so I thought I’d try out the short reads 1 week subscription. It was okay but not worth $14.99, so I cancelled before I my renewal date and today they charged my account. I usually take screen shots for this reason but had a lot on my mind and forgot. Tried talking to their customer service. Spent at least three hours waiting for some response and still nothing almost 5.5hours later. Absolutely horrible service and would not recommend doing any subscriptions, not worth the money.
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Improvement needed

The stories are decent. However, the paywall is a little insane. Pearls and coins are a bit expensive. I think a lot of apps like this would benefit from a WEBTOON/wattpad approach. Were the majority of the story is free just unlocked per day and with ads. With the option to get early access in the form of coins. As with the current system, I’m very tempted to Uninstall the app and simply go to a cheaper version. As many other apps have a more extensive catalogue for a cheaper price. Another issue that I have with the pearls and rewards section is some pearls can only be used on certain stories. Which sucks. I’m not going to read those stories that I have exclusive pearls for, they don’t interest me. So now I wasted my reward. Quite frankly the whole situation is just frustrating and does temp me to uninstall the app. However, I am really addicted to the story that I’m currently reading so I’ll put up with it for now. But I definitely will not read another story on this app.
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