For years, Natasha Tardioli kept a spreadsheet tracking romance books. Every novel she finished got its own row. Every book she wanted to read went on a list. She tracked it all year by year and, by the end of each year, she got to see how many books she had read.
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For years, Natasha Tardioli kept a spreadsheet tracking romance books. Every novel she finished got its own row. Every book she wanted to read went on a list. She tracked it all year by year and, by the end of each year, she got to see how many books she had read.
“All I wanted to know was, okay, how many books did I read last year and what am I going to read this year?” Tardioli told OBJ.
While the spreadsheet showed the answer to the first question, it wasn’t very helpful at the second. She tried a few apps, but none worked for her. In the end, Tardioli, a former marketing director at Ottawa’s L-Spark technology accelerator, built her own platform.
Romancy is a book discovery platform designed for romance readers. Its premise is to match users with romance books they will love based on their personal tastes, interests and reading history. The platform launched its first beta event on June 3 at Evermore Books in Ottawa. It drew more than 30 people and Tardioli described the event as the local romance community embracing the new platform with open arms.
The romance novel industry has become one of the most profitable in publishing across North America. U.S. print romance sales rose more than nine per cent in 2024, while the broader print market grew only one per cent. Print romance then surged 24 per cent in 2025, and is now valued at approximately $19.7 billion.
Yet, as Tardioli discovered, the genre has a fundamental problem with discovery. Most book recommendation platforms suggest books based on what is trending, not what the individual reader gravitates toward. While this system helps trending authors, it creates gaps between the works of smaller authors and the readers most likely to love them.
“It’s algorithms based on trends,” Tardioli explained. “I find it can be hard for the authors who really match a reader’s personal taste. If they’re not trending, it’s really hard to find their people.”
Romancy’s answer to the problem is a matching engine built on user data. When users join the platform, they log the books they have read and submit what Tardioli calls a “vibe review,” or a book review written in the user’s own words through several guided questions.
“It’s just for you, no one else sees it,” she said. “What it does is help that algorithm build around you and your tastes.”
She finds traditional star ratings inadequate for capturing why a reader likes or dislikes a particular book. A reader might love the pacing of one novel, but hate its ending. Another reader may adore an author’s voice, but find the plot unsatisfying. Tardioli says the vibe review feeds the AI in the reader’s own voice and helps it suggest the next book as it learns more about the individual.
“There’s so much context about what you thought of it that really has nowhere to go,” she said. “That’s what the vibe review does.”
The platform also has a vibe check, which allows users to scan a physical book at a library or bookstore to see how well it matches their personal taste. Tardioli tested it herself at a library recently.
“Some of the titles in there don’t have the same cover art as the trendy titles do right now,” she said, “so they’re easier to overlook. But really the content of them is highly aligned to what I want to read.”
Alignment between readers and authors is at the core of what she’s building, she said. Romance readers exhibit specific, personal tastes. The genre spans dark romance to high-fantasy romance, each with its own conventions and audiences.
The platform’s database is built from open APIs to build a foundation, but Tardioli plans to rely on the user base to expand it. Her goal is to represent every author in the genre. Indie authors and mid-list writers make up a significant share of the romance market and stand to benefit from the romancy discovery engine.
But building around those authors also means confronting the anxiety many of them feel about AI. Tardioli says Romancy does not scrape books, does not generate content and is not in the business of replacing writers.
“We’re almost trying to get out of the way,” she said. “We want to make a connection between the reader and the author and then get out of the way.”
The community response so far has been excellent, according to Tardioli. The beta event at Evermore brought in readers, many of them strangers to Tardioli, who had signed up for early access and wanted to see the platform in person. A pop-up at Hopeless Romantic Books in Toronto followed and Tardioli plans to be at an Ottawa romance book market on June 18.
“As the world gets noisier, this becomes a way where the readers and their taste is in the driver’s seat,” she said. “And the authors now have a better chance of having their work discovered by the people that will really love it.”
The platform has not yet pursued formal investment and currently operates as a web app to allow for rapid feedback and iteration. A full app store launch is planned for later this summer. Early access is available at romancy.co
