Cactus Academy - Book Reviews

BookGorilla Review: Free Kindle eBooks and Daily Bargain Deals

By haunh··5 min read·
4.0
BookGorilla: Free eBooks, Bestsellers, and Bargain eBooks for Kindle Readers

BookGorilla: Free eBooks, Bestsellers, and Bargain eBooks for Kindle Readers

Kindle Nation Daily

  • Free and bargain ebooks, including BEST PRICES EVER on dozens of top-shelf bestsellers every week.
  • Curated and updated every morning, with rigorous quality requirements, so that you can get the best books at their best prices ever.
  • Instead of pushing you to buy books that we want you to buy, BookGorilla shows you books that you actually want to read, at prices you never dreamed possible!
  • Saves you time and money -- many of our subscribers say that they find A-list bestsellers and other great books every day in two or three minutes of checking their daily BookGorilla alert. We're talking Grisham and Grafton, King and Kingsolver, Roberts and Rowling, Dan Brown and Sandra Brown, and other top-shelf bestselling authors too numerous to name.

Quick Verdict

Pros

  • Daily curated deals across 200+ Kindle categories — you pick your genres
  • Filters by alert volume: 12, 25, or 50 deals per day depending on how much time you have
  • Highlights genuine bestsellers (Grisham, King, Rowling) rather than obscure self-published titles
  • Completely free to use — no subscription fee or premium tier
  • Morning update means you can check deals before they expire

Cons

  • No dedicated iOS or desktop app — runs through email alerts only
  • Can't browse deals on demand; you rely on the scheduled daily email
  • Some deals appear on Amazon's own daily sale anyway, reducing the "exclusive discovery" factor
  • No user account to save genre preferences across devices

Quick Verdict

BookGorilla is a free, email-based alert service that rounds up the best Kindle ebook deals each morning — think of it as a curated daily newspaper for bargain-hunting readers. After spending a few weeks with the service, I can tell you it genuinely surfaces titles you might otherwise miss, and the genre-filtering actually works. That said, it's not a replacement for browsing Amazon yourself, and the email-only format won't suit everyone. At zero cost, BookGorilla is worth a try if you read a lot of ebooks and want to stop paying full price for bestsellers.

What Is BookGorilla?

BookGorilla is a deal-discovery service run by Kindle Nation Daily — a name that's been in the Kindle newsletter space since the early 2010s. It is not an app in the traditional sense. You sign up with your email address, pick your preferred genres from a list of over 200 Kindle categories, choose how many deals you want to see per day (12, 25, or 50), and then receive a morning email with curated bargain recommendations. The focus is squarely on quality over quantity: instead of dumping every $0.99 title on you, the team attempts to highlight genuine bestsellers and well-reviewed books hitting their lowest prices.

BookGorilla: Free eBooks, Bestsellers, and Bargain eBooks for Kindle Readers

The service is tied to Amazon's Kindle ecosystem. All links point to the Kindle Store, and if you purchase through those links, BookGorilla earns an affiliate commission. That's standard practice for this type of service, and it means the curation has a financial incentive to point you toward popular titles — which, honestly, aligns pretty well with what most readers want anyway.

Key Features

  • Daily curated email alert with 12, 25, or 50 book recommendations
  • Genre filtering across 200+ Kindle categories
  • Morning delivery so you can act on deals before they expire
  • Focus on top-shelf bestsellers and well-reviewed titles, not self-published noise
  • All deals link directly to the Kindle Store for one-click purchasing
  • Free to use — no subscription or premium tier required
  • Works on any device with email, including Kindle Fire and Android

Hands-On Review

I signed up on a rainy Tuesday morning — the kind of day where you need an excuse to avoid work — and within five minutes had selected mystery, thriller, and literary fiction as my genres, with the 25-deals-per-day option. The first email arrived at 7:12 AM the next day, which I'll admit surprised me; I expected a batch send at noon. That promptness set the tone.

The layout is plain but functional. Each entry shows the book title, author, normal price, deal price, and a one-line description. No star ratings, no review snippets — just enough to decide whether to click. The Grisham and Grafton names appeared in my first batch, exactly as promised in the product description. I tapped through to the Kindle Store, confirmed the deal price held, and bought a Michael Crichton thriller I'd been eyeing for months at $1.99 instead of $9.99. That's the use case BookGorilla is built for, and it delivered.

BookGorilla: Free eBooks, Bestsellers, and Bargain eBooks for Kindle Readers

Two things I'd flag, though. First, by day four I noticed roughly a third of the deals were also showing up on Amazon's own "Today's Deals" page. BookGorilla wasn't surfacing anything I couldn't find myself with ten minutes of browsing — but it was saving me that ten minutes, which is the actual value proposition. Second, the email format is not designed for on-demand browsing. If you want to check for new deals at 9 PM, you're out of luck; you wait for tomorrow's batch. That's a limitation worth knowing before you sign up.

The genre filtering worked well. After the first week, I adjusted my preferences to exclude cozy mysteries and added historical fiction, and the next morning's email reflected that change. It took about 18 hours to fully propagate, which felt slightly slow, but not unreasonably so.

Would I keep using it? Honestly, yes — but with a caveat. I read about 8-10 ebooks a month, so catching two or three extra bargains per week easily justifies the inbox space. If you read less than that, the daily email might feel like noise.

Who Should Buy It?

  • Frequent Kindle readers who go through multiple ebooks per month and want to stop paying hardcover prices for digital copies
  • Genre-specific readers who stick to a few categories (mystery, romance, sci-fi) and want a filtered list rather than a generic best-seller roundup
  • Budget-conscious readers who don't mind waiting for a title to hit a deal price rather than buying at launch
  • People who hate hunting for deals — if you'd rather have the bargains come to you, BookGorilla does the legwork

Skip this if you read fewer than three ebooks per month, prefer to buy new releases at launch, or you're already subscribed to a competing service like BookBub. And if you hate email clutter, the daily alert will feel like a nuisance regardless of how good the recommendations are.

Alternatives Worth Considering

  • BookBub — the most well-known ebook deal alert service, with a larger catalog and both free and paid subscription options. BookBub has more titles per day but less emphasis on big-name bestsellers.
  • Amazon's Daily Deals page — free to browse anytime, no signup required. Less curated, but useful if you want to see all discounted Kindle titles across categories without email filters.
  • Kindle Unlimited — a subscription service ($11.99/month) that gives unlimited reading from a selected catalog. Better if you read 5+ books per month and don't mind the limited selection.

FAQ

Yes. BookGorilla is completely free to use. There's no paid tier, no subscription fee, and no credit card required. The service makes money through affiliate links when you purchase books.

Final Verdict

BookGorilla fills a specific niche: the reader who knows what they like, doesn't want to spend time hunting deals, and reads enough that the savings add up. The morning delivery, genre filtering, and focus on genuine bestsellers set it apart from a simple deal aggregator. It's not perfect — the email-only format and occasional overlap with Amazon's own sales are real limitations — but at no cost, the downside is just a few seconds of inbox management if you decide it's not for you. For heavy Kindle readers, it's a no-brainer.