The confession booth, but make it a library
Forbidden Folio is a reading tracker for dark romance readers, where one tag never has to explain the whole book. Heat, Darkness, relationship dynamics, Kink & Spice, story shape, and content notes stay distinct — and your star rating stays entirely its own thing.
Private by default. No public activity feed. Built for the books you don't want to explain.
Why this exists
A Notes app with two hundred untitled entries. A spreadsheet you built at 2am with a column called "unhinged?". A Notion template you filled in for eleven books and then quietly abandoned. None of it was built for the way you read — you just made it work, because nothing else would.
You shouldn't have had to.
Built for another era
Great for keeping a basic record. But 'spicy' usually becomes one vague shelf, custom tags take real effort, and your reading history is still tied to a social profile. It can't natively keep Heat, Darkness, relationship dynamics, erotic practice, content notes, and personal reaction as separate signals.
Better, but genre-agnostic
Beautiful reading data, moods, pacing, and content warnings. But its framework is built for every kind of book — not the difference between Heat and Darkness, relationship structure and pacing, or erotic practice and consent framing.
Great at discovery
Genuinely knows the books, and we send people there happily. It's excellent for discovering romance through crowd-sourced flame ratings, tropes, and filters. Forbidden Folio is for what happens after: the private shelf, personal notes, reread mood, boundaries, and taste history built from what you actually finished at 3am.
One book, separate signals
Heat
Sweet to Unhinged, rated on a five-level scale built around on-page sexual explicitness and frequency.
Darkness
Shadowed to Relentless, tracked on its own scale for threat, coercion, violence, transgression, and disturbing material.
Relationship
Structure, arcs, roles, boundaries, patterns, and the emotional payoff holding the relationship together — or pulling it apart.
Intimacy
Kink, erotic practices, physical dynamics, and consent framing stay separate from Heat.
Story
Genre, setting, plot, character archetypes, pacing, tone, structure, and narrative focus keep their own meanings.
Content notes
Neutral reader context for material inside the book. Information, not moral commentary.
Nothing is greyed out, censored or tucked behind a warning interstitial. This is the starting vocabulary — you'll never be the first person to type it.
Heat
Darkness
Across the folio
Questions
The short answer
Forbidden Folio is a personal reading space — Heat, Darkness, relationship dynamics, Kink & Spice, story shape, and content notes kept distinct and private until you decide otherwise.