Before the Coffee Gets Cold cover art

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Book 1

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Before the Coffee Gets Cold

By: Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Geoffrey Trousselot - translator
Narrated by: Arina Ii
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The cosy, heartwarming first book in the multi-million copy bestselling series.

What would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time? Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, translated from Japanese, explores this age-old question . . .


In a cosy 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 back in time.

Prepare to meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’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 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 . . .

‘This book broke my heart, took the pieces, and put them back together in a messy and beautiful way. . . ' - well.read.woman on Instagram

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.

City Life Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism Science Fiction Time Travel Urban World Literature Magic Fantasy Feel-Good Heartfelt Tear-jerking Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

Heartwarming, whimsical . . . offering comfort at a time when the world seems off-kilter and chaotic
All stars
Most relevant
Beautifully written story and very interesting concept. Time travel that is all about love, connections, and humanity.

Beautiful

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⭐ 3.5/5 ⭐

A café in Tokyo offers customers an opportunity to travel in time with some conditions: you have to remain in your seat, you can only meet with someone who's been to the cafe, you cannot change the present. However, the most important rule is you have to return to the present before the coffee gets cold.

- A book I recently read (The Kamogawa Food Detectives) is frequently compared to this book and I can. see the similarities. Similar vibes are involved and a sense of longing, bittersweet emotions and the processes of decisions and actions made. I personally preferred the way The Kamogawa Food Detectives handled this but Before the Coffee Gets Cold touched me too.

- The topics are sensitive. There are stories featuring lovers facing separation, a wife who's husband has dementia, a woman wanting a final chance to make amends with her dead sister and a pregnant woman facing a difficult situation. I liked how the book wasn't all happy endings but that the resolutions made sense and elicited feelings. I would recommend checking out content warnings if you are sensitive to themes of medical issues and/or grief.

- The cafe itself was fun to imagine. This basement space with a table almost exclusively occupied by a ghost and clocks showing different times. The staff made the cafe more alive, with different and interesting characters. I'm looking forward to hearing what happens to them in the rest of the series.

A sad but cosy book. If you want a book that feels bittersweet, can help you cry or to enjoy some magical realism, Before the Coffee Gets Cold may be for you.

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The stories from the book are heart warming and make you reflect upon your own story.They are filled with emotion and wisdom. The only part that I did it like about the book is that there are passages that repeat a lot and often. Especially when you listen to the book in a row, it is a bit annoying to hear the same thing repeating again and again. But other than that, thank you for a very inspiring book.

Great stories with wisdom to follow upon

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The narration wasn't the best and I did occasionally lose track of who was who. Having said that, I did enjoy this gentle read and new take on time travel. Four distinct stories, all slightly interwoven and linked by the cafe and each had a merit all its own. It's a very short book although I guess the format and message works better that way.

Gentle story and thought provoking too, enjoyed it

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Beautifully written, deceptively simple and full of warm moments. A thought provoking tale. Leaves the reader/listener with a enough gaps to plug with imagination and own this story as their own.

A story about human connection

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