Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

A book about loss, connections, and deeply inconvenient time travel. Set in a small café in Tokyo, this novel is made up of four interconnected stories about people who wish to travel through time to see a loved one, but the conditions to do so seem so arbitrary you have to question why anyone would bother:

- You can only see someone who has been to the café before.
- You can only travel back in one particular seat and may not move from it for the duration of travel.
- Nothing you do during travel will affect the present.
- You must return before the coffee gets cold.

This set of stories provides an interesting perspective into the lengths people could theoretically go to in order to remedy the regret of words left unsaid. With themes including degenerative disease, death, and lost love, this read creates a satisfying emotional roller coaster that left me with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face. It should also be noted that this short novel does in fact go excellently with coffee.

Available as a hard copy or an eBook.

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