Title: Before the coffee gets cold
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Publisher: Picador
Pages: 213
Genre: Fiction
My Rating: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤

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Before the coffee gets cold

Tucked away in a quiet back alley of Tokyo, there’s a small café that looks charming from the outside. Inside, however, the space is much more cramped. Still, the coffee is excellent. But this little café offers something far more unique—it gives customers the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each longing to return to the past for different reasons: a woman hoping to reunite with the man who left her, a wife receiving a letter from her husband who has Alzheimer’s, a woman wanting to see her sister one last time, and a mother desperate to meet the daughter she will never get to know.

Review

Lately, I’ve been seeing Before the Coffee Gets Cold and the rest of the series all over social media, which made me curious about what these books were about. There are currently six books in the series, though I’m not sure if the sixth one has been translated yet—Goodreads still shows me the Japanese title.

This book is divided into four sections, each around 50 pages long. One thing I noticed right away was the lack of chapters, which meant I had to read each part in one sitting. If you’re planning to read this book, keep that in mind—don’t start a new section unless you have enough time to finish it. Personally, I prefer short chapters, so the 50-page stretches were a bit of a challenge. But at the same time, I ended up flying through it.

Now that it’s been a few days since I finished, I’m still not sure how I feel about this book. The premise is intriguing, and the stories themselves were interesting enough, but I didn’t feel much while reading. I was emotionally numb for most of it—except, maybe, during the last part. I’ve seen a lot of Goodreads reviews saying this book made people emotional, but for me, it just didn’t hit. And I’m usually a crier—I cry a lot.

Another thing that stood out was the repetition. The book kept re-explaining the rules of time travel, reintroducing characters, and reiterating the same details. That said, the characters all had one major thing in common: loss. Each of them was dealing with losing someone important and longing for a chance to see them again.

Since this book was originally written in Japanese, I can’t help but wonder if something got lost in translation. That’s actually why I always read in English rather than waiting for the Dutch translation (I’m Dutch). The concept had so much potential, but I was expecting more—more depth, more emotion, more connection. It wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, but I really thought it would make me feel something, especially with such an emotional subject.

At this point, I’m unsure if I want to continue the series. The books are relatively short, which could be helpful if I ever need a quick read to catch up on my Goodreads goal. But for now, I think I’d rather focus on other books. I have a feeling this series just isn’t for me—it might be a little overhyped. I’m giving it three stars because I see the potential, and it wasn’t bad—I just wanted more.

4o

The post Before the Coffee gets cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi | Book Review first appeared on A happy life.

<p>The post Before the Coffee gets cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi | Book Review first appeared on A happy life.</p>