Before the Coffee Gets Cold

By: Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Narrated by: Arina Ii

Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's Summary

Over One Million Copies Sold

Now an International Best Seller

If you could go back, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than 100 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 best-selling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

©2020 Toshikazu Kawaguchi (P)2020 Harlequin Audio

An Enjoyable Cup of Coffee Awaits

This was very good. I wasn’t sure what to expect but found myself captivated by the character’s stories and the setting. This also shows that our assumptions or judgments of people and situations can be wildly off mark. Very thought provoking. The narration seemed a bit slower than what I am used to and while one can speed things up, I ended up feeling that it helped to draw me into the story more. Well done. Don’t expect a fast pace sci-fi time travel story. This is one you will want to take your time to enjoy and have a cup of coffee with.

Don't listen while driving

Struggled to finish this book. It was so boring and slow. I would not recommend it to anyone.

Wonderful! Beautiful and heart warming story!

I listened to this book while commuting. I love how the premise of the book is sort of bizarre and I got so drawn into the story. The café is a curious place and the characters are an unusual bunch. The story was woven around all these characters so beautifully. The bonds formed between the characters and how their experiences in the café changed them in unexpected ways is truly heart warming.

But I have to ask...

Who is that woman with the novel? I would love to know more than what was written but I guess we’ll never know?

Bitter Sweet

A nice melancholy book for a rainy day. Best read with coffee in a comfy chair.

Time travel

A thoughtful piece capturing the heartstrings with a pull at love, hope, sacrifice, denial and everything in between. I really enjoyed each of the stories and the connections they formed through the cafe.

Naive, Insufferable, Characters with Somewhat Cute

The characters are naive and painfully unprepared for life. They are often entitled and emotional. The women are much like toddlers throwing tantrums when they don't get their way. They make communication needlessly complicated by being incapable of articulating what they need/intend, generally because they get befuddled or "just can't handle it". It's otherwise a cute parable with similarities to a chaste Callahan's Chronicles. This is more or less "sentimental fiction" with people acting painfully slow (not understanding the obvious) in order to give the plot somewhere to go.

Don't.

Maybe it's the story, maybe it's the reader, maybe it's the translation, whatever it is, it's tedious.

Loved this book

This book is a lovely expression of hope. I loved it. It is also very different than your ordinary story.

Unnecessarily Frustrating

This collection of stories left me unsatisfied. It didn't live up to its potential. I liked the characters, and the premise was promising, but it needed to be fleshed out more. I have unanswered questions, such as (spoiler alert)...

Why couldn't they have refilled the cup? ...or used a different one that would cool more slowly? ...or covered it?

Why was it necessary to drink it at all, if leaving the seat would return you to the present just as well? I kept waiting for someone to outsmart the system.

Why didn't they always use the thermometer? What temperature was the official boundary for "cool?"

Why didn't anyone plan better before time-traveling?

What was the deal with the ghost lady? And the 3 clocks? And the fact that it was always climate-controlled without the need for an a/c unit?

If it's a cheap ploy to get me to read the sequel, I feel manipulated.

Too too

Too slow
Too dull
Too tedious
Too boring
A definite waste of my time so I won’t bother to waste any more and will not finish it.