# SoBrief: Book Summaries — user reviews > 36 indexed App Store user reviews of SoBrief by Audiblogs, Inc., rated 4.40/5 from 354 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sobrief-book-summaries/id6723865613/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sobrief-book-summaries/id6723865613.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 270 · 4★ 36 · 3★ 11 · 2★ 2 · 1★ 35 ## Newest reviews (15 of 36) ### 1/5 — App that instantly tries to make you pay before you can even see what it does *2025-11-08* Did the whole download and answered all the questions then it immediately asks for you to pay to see anything. It doesn’t let you view your profile after asking multiple questions and having you upload your books and your reviews so it can build your preferences. I never pay for an app unless I can verify that it does what I want. It wouldn’t let me out of the screen to try and get money from me. I read a few reviews after and apparently if you don’t pay it doesn’t let you view anything. Also multiple people have paid but the app still doesn’t show them what it claims to. I won’t be wasting anymore time on this. ### 1/5 — :( *2025-11-07* i’m very disappointed, you need to have an account to be able to know that nothing is free on this app. ### 1/5 — REALLY *2025-11-05* I went through the process of putting preferences and such and then tried to get me to pay or I couldn’t unlock the full app or in other words the app itself. The concept is great however the owners greed ruined it viability for enjoyment. ### 1/5 — “Sometimes AI Suggests Titles That Don’t Exist” constant error *2025-11-05* First the price is insane for what the app is. As soon as I started the trial I explored the app fully and cancelled my subscription because half of the features are either underbaked or just straight not there. The “tinder” style book recommendation engine has worked LITERALLY ONCE and I have received nothing except for the title error since then. It’s not like I read the world’s most niche stuff (Mistborn, Red Rising, Guards! Guards!) but it just hasn’t recommended anything… Maybe in 6 months when it’s cooked a bit better but currently it does nothing that I wanted it to do when I saw the ad on instagram. ### 1/5 — Payments to unlock anything *2025-11-02* That we don’t have access to everything without a payment is one thing, but to have to create an account and THEN discovered that you can’t get anything (not even the list of books that you just registered) makes it a scam from my point of view. You don’t get to require personnal informations and then inform the user that without paying, they don’t a single feature of your app. You could have made it a paid app at the install, with what is freely accessible, it would have been the same. ### 1/5 — Refuse to remove my data *2025-10-30, version 1.2.8* The concept of this app is great but you can’t do anything without paying for it which is an absurd amount of money. I decided to delete the account and the delete account button doesn’t seem to work. Not a great system! ### 1/5 — Definitely no *2025-10-28* You cannot do anything without paying. It lets you set up a profile for yourself but then you can’t actually see your recommendations unless you pay for the app. It doesn’t show you your preferences or anything. ### 1/5 — NOT GOOD *2025-10-28* So I’m thinking I’m going to have a great app that I get book recommendations from, but before you even get to see how the app works you are being asked to pay for it. It’s an AI app that’s asking for a subscription. And then once you get out of the 5 pages asking you for money, you only briefly get to see how the app works BECAUSE THE WHOLE APP IS BLOCKED BY A PAY WALL. Why would I EVER buy an app when I don’t even know how it works or if it does what I want it to do. You used AI to make it but are asking people for EIGHTY DOLLARS to completely own the app. Do better. At least allow people to see HOW THE APP WORKS before asking for ANYTHING. ### 1/5 — Not a single free feature *2025-10-27* Not a single free feature and the first selection does not look promising ### 1/5 — Sofort kostenpflichtig *2025-10-25* Man kann außer einem Profil anlegen nichts mit der App tun wenn man nicht bereit ist 10€ pro Monat auszugeben, für mich eindeutig zu viel und finde es auch relativ frech, dass dies nicht vorher erwähnt wird… Schade. ### 1/5 — Not functional *2025-09-18* I signed up for the monthly plan, but every time I try to read a summary it says I need to sign up again. I am signed it - it has my saved books, interests, etc. - but I cannot access materials. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to access 10 free summaries in the free plan even though they claim you can (so I tried the pay plan and it still doesn’t work). ### 1/5 — Where is my review? *2025-09-02* Where is my review I wrote a couple days ago?? Was it deleted? Okay so here goes… All I’ve had since signing up or attempting to sign up, is issue after issue. I don’t want to bad mouth this app or tear it down verballyI love the idea of this app, if only it functioned like it was supposed to!!! I signed up for this app 2 times paying the annual fee of $50 both times and it’s still telling me that I haven’t signed up and I’m still using the free account (not that it works or anything) I tried to call and speak to someone to someone, but nope the AI person told me that only paying customers can speak to someone, umm hello that’s me, a paying customer times 2. At this point I just want my $100 back, I don’t care about this app anymore, here I am hoping to support this app, So brief & they have horrible customer service and the app doesn’t work at all. Please give me my money back and don’t erase my review. Thanks ### 1/5 — Anti-Education *2025-08-22* This app is classified as education but using LLMs is the opposite of that ### 1/5 — You have to pay *2025-08-22* All you can do is swipe through the most AI generated descriptions of about 10 books just to be asked to pay a stupid amount of money for an unoriginal service. ### 1/5 — Terrible *2025-06-28, version 1.2.6* No esta en español y en ese idioma estan promocionando la app. Que ridiculez ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Was great *2026-06-27* Was great till app crashed and stopped working. Paid for lifetime membership. Wtf! ### 1/5 — Ash *2026-04-13* Sucks doesn’t give you any insight then charges you 50$ ### 1/5 — no free *2026-03-24* no free for note or audio.bad experience ### 1/5 — Why is it advertised as free or semi-free when you have to pay for everything? Use Sumreads instead! *2026-02-14* I saw the app advertised as free unlike Blinkist, so I downloaded and filled the opening survey, and then it said I had to pay money to do anything. Not even one book was free. I could've tolerated a semi-free approach with limited selection, but this was nothing free. Was free it one point, but not now? If so, that's very rude. That's without getting into the low-quality AI summaries which would be tolerable if it was free, but since it isn't, I'm better off paying for the high-quality human-written summaries of Blinkist, or my current favorite, Uptime. Use the website Sumreads instead, actually free AI book summaries! ### 1/5 — App not working *2026-01-19* Concept is great when it works, but technical issues and very little support. ### 1/5 — Can I give negative stars? *2026-01-18* I was so excited to use this app. I was going to listen to so many books and I was so excited to see book recommendations. But no, I click on literally anything and it says I have to pay. Why didn't it tell me I cant use the app unless I pay? I wouldn't have wasted my time on answering questions if I knew it was pointless. ### 1/5 — This is NOT a free app *2026-01-10* The app can’t be used without their subscription! ### 1/5 — didn't last a full minute *2025-12-31* constantly asking for subscriptions, clearly very ai including several ai "written" books, mostly was self help books and there was no way to give preferences ### 1/5 — Awful app - do not recommend *2025-11-15, version 1.2.8* Promises more than it delivers and extortionate fees/pricing point! Do not recommend - waste of money ### 1/5 — You have to pay for this app *2025-11-09* You have to pay for an app that’s AI generated??? What the heck?? You’re better off using GoodReads, Fable or StoryGraph instead if you want book recommendations from REAL people who’ve actually read the books! ## Most praised reviews (9 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Great *2026-01-10, version 1.2.9* Great app , any book I want a summary on it gets , great stuff guys ### 5/5 — LOVE *2025-10-13* I have the paid version & I love that I can get book recs based on my personality. Also I stalk all my fav books that I read like authors character details & read the summaries if I forget what was said in a book series 🫶🏽 it would be cool if I could upload my good reads history as well ### 5/5 — Nice app. *2025-05-25, version 1.2.6* Really appreciate for this app. Love to catch up a book in everyday. ### 5/5 — My go-to for reading *2025-04-20* Allows me to accelerate my reading 10x ### 4/5 — ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ *2025-06-12, version 1.2.6* I like this but I would put Spanish in the section of languages ### 2/5 — Good Idea, Bad Execution *2025-09-21, version 1.2.8* Just an FYI if you saw this on tiktok: Most things are locked behind a paywall. Once you've done the initial setting up of the account, it pesters you to pay to unlock the full app, not even just fun bonus features. You have to pay to literally do anything. ### 2/5 — Potential but not there yet *2025-06-12* The book recommendations are not great, I was recommended the Harry Potter series from The da Vinci Code and The Little Prince from Animal Farm.. The summaries however are good and informative. The ‘delete account’ button is also not functional which is very cheeky and annoying ### 2/5 — Almost good except… *2025-05-25, version 1.2.6* I really like the concept of this app, and the wide selection of books is impressive. However, the app is full of bugs. It claims to support 40 languages, but when I tried to explore them, the language I needed wasn’t even available. Selecting other languages often leads to a blank screen with just a small “not found” message. You really should have your QA team thoroughly test the app before deploying it to users. If these issues aren’t fixed soon, I’ll probably have to uninstall the app. ### 2/5 — Great concept, poor execution *2025-05-04* The idea is great. When the app works it’s very useful to read multiple books quickly and get the gist and main points. However, the app frequently crashes, thinks you don’t have an account when you do, and there are a lot of books that aren’t summarized yet. --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-04.*