Eh, no. GoodReads is more about connecting to your existing friends and sharing books between each other, not really designed for you to meet new people based off of your shared interest in books.

But as for the comment above yours, that is Goodreads. It doesn't sell the books, but is a central place to discuss books. Unlike Amazon.com comments, you don't need to verify anything to be able to comment on a book.

And lastly, it's kind of difficult to say that it's an independent source of reviews, considering that Amazon purchased GoodReads back in 2013, GoodReads offers Amazon-only discounts, and Amazon is always the preferred seller (while the rest of the sellers are hidden behind a dropdown).

I think you have groups on Goodreads that are intended for discussing a specific topic, book, or author's books. But I agree in that it's not really designed for meeting new people.

>I often wish I could connect with people who are reading or have read the same books as me

LibraryThing has that feature, although the algorithm is not super smart. When I first created an account, I put in all the books I could remember that I had read. Then I clicked on the link to find other users most like me. The top one had a whole series of books that I had read and completely forgotten to add to my catalog. It was uncanny - I couldn't think of any heuristic - they were all mystery novels, and I had almost none in my collection.