Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi | Book Review
Credit: Harper Collins
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
About the Book: In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café 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 café 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.
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?
Review
Bravo to the designer of this book. Simple but appealing, the teal and white cover featuring two chairs, two coffees, and a small fluffy cat invites readers to ask the question: What would you change if you could travel back in time? This book is a fast read featuring four vignettes of visitors to this mystical café looking to connect with loved ones from the past (and sometimes future). Through these stories, we learn more about the people that run the café. Each chapter follows a different person visiting the café and, in each story, we are touched by the desire for connection and closer. This book is a quick read and may even inspire a teardrop or two as Kawaguchi captures what it really means to be human.