Staff Reviews
A gentle, beautifully paced novel about a cafe that offers its guests the opportunity to time travel, given that they follow a certain set of rules. What inspires someone to want to time travel? Often it's because we regret something that happened in the past, we wish we could just go back and say the right thing, do the right thing, just change the present outcome somehow... Although the characters coming to this cafe often find themselves in such circumstances, this book is one of the most hopeful things I've ever read. It's sure to warm your heart and keep you engaged, but just remember to take a break every once in a while, before your own coffee ends up getting cold...
— Kestin
December 2020 Indie Next List
“This was the most interesting and wholesome take on time travel I have ever read. Everything in the world is totally normal, but if you sit in a specific seat in a specific cafe in Tokyo, you can travel back in time. There are some rules in order to time travel, but my favorite one? You can only stay in the past for as long as your coffee is warm. This charming and emotional story of four different women teaches about the importance of making the most with the time you’re given.”
— Lauren Suidgeest, Schuler Books (Grand Rapids), Grand Rapids, MI
Description
*NOW AN LA TIMES BESTSELLER*
*AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*The first book in the five million-copy bestselling magical realism seriesIf you could go back in time, who would you want to meet?In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a caf that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee--the chance to travel back in time.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the caf in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
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, and
- meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi's internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?
Meet more wonderful characters in the rest of the captivating Before the Coffee Gets Cold series: - Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Book 1)
- Tales from the Cafe (Book 2)
- Before Your Memory Fades (Book 3)
- Before We Say Goodbye (Book 4)
- Before We Forget Kindness (Book 5)
- Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Boxed Set (Books 1-3)
