Before the Coffee Gets Cold

What would you change if you could travel back in time?

If you could go back, who would you want to meet?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which 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 cafe in the hopes of making that journey. But tiem travel isn't so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can take only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story – translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot – explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time?


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Series

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5 primary books

#1 in Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a 5-book series with 5 released primary works first released in 2015 with contributions by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

#1
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
#2
Tales from the Cafe
#3
Before Your Memory Fades
#4
Before We Say Goodbye
#5
Before We Forget Kindness

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Nicole MarkSupporter

This book was delightful. I read it because someone in my feed gave it a good rating, and it turned out to be the magical realism I needed right now. I'm looking forward to reading book #2. (Everything else I wanted to say was a spoiler!)

March 27, 2023

There is nobody I would want to see badly enough to go through this many rules of time travel.

May 4, 2021

Couldn't handle the writing style. Stating the obvious, telling me the same thing three times, etc.

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