Before the Coffee Gets Cold
The cosy million-copy sensation from Japan
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3.8 • 19 Ratings
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- €6.99
Publisher Description
The bestselling international phenomenon, now wrapped up in a gorgeous, special festive gift edition - the perfect stocking filler for a loved one.
What would you do if you could go back in time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe 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 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
- see their sister one last time
- 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 cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving Before the coffee gets cold explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
Continue the beautifully moving storytelling with Tales from the Cafe, Before Your Memory Fades, Before We Say Goodbye, Before We Forget Kindness and Before I knew I loved you.
Customer Reviews
Meh
I just didn’t really care for it, maybe short stories aren’t for me but I just found myself being like why do I care about this?
Now don’t get me wrong it does make you think about what you would do if given this opportunity with the same rules and reflect on why these people go back in time to begin with if nothing about their present will change, but it just wasn’t all that for me.
I found it a little hard to follow because there was basically no character development yet you were expected to deeply root for all these characters and just know who they are by their names.
I especially had issues with the last story as I feel it has borderline plot holes and I do not understand kei and Nagares relationship at all like does he even like her idk maybe it’s a cultural thing.
Spoiler!!!!!!
the whole situation with her going to the future to meet her daughter is literally a plot hole to me like how did the rest of the staff figure out the time mishap yet still booked a trip to Hokkaido and chose to go instead of seeing their best friend/ wife who has been dead for 15 years?? And miki being shy to talk to her dead mother at 15y/o when she knows she only had until the coffee gets cold to meet her is just like not realistic to me idk
Overall idk wouldn’t be my fav very mid I won’t be reading the rest of the series