Book Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold // Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Type: Series: Before the Coffee gets Cold #1

Format: Physical Book

Genre: Magical Realism

Publication Date: 6 December 2016

Synopsis: 

What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . .

Rate: 4.5 / 5 ⭐

Review: 

A basement cafe in the middle of the bustling city of Tokyo that offers something more than coffee and a sweet fix. If you sit in a particular seat, you can travel back in time. However, like all time travelling tales, there are rules to be followed. One main thing, no matter what you do when you go back to the past, it will not change the present.

So that brings the question, what is the point of going to the past if it cannot change the present. I had that same thought when I read this book. How was it going to change anything if the reason you're going back is to change something... But honestly after reading the book, I understood the message it was trying to give (or I hope I did).

A very refreshing take on the usual time travelling books, that address very real issues that we can somehow relate to. It was also emotional and thought provoking. The book is divided into four parts and my favourite was the 'Husband and Wife' story.

A well deserved hyped book and I definitely recommend checking it out. 

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

p.s. I know, the review sucks. give me time to get used to writing reviews again.