Book Review #4: Before the Coffee Gets Cold
13 January 2026
Before the Coffee Gets Cold is quite different to everything else I've read, but I'm really glad that I did. I'm also very happy to get book number 3 done for 2026!
Title: Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot)
Publication Date: 06 December, 2015
Official Length: 213 pages
Score: ★★★★☆
I am not a huge anime fan but I've seen a few, and I have noticed a trope, if you can call it a trope, where everything is over-explained, like any moment could be someone's first moment watching so it has to recap everything. Maybe it's a cultural thing, because I noticed it in this book too! The rules of time travel are excruciatingly repeated time and time again, just in case you forgot? And the book is not that long, so it's really not necessary. That aside, I really enjoyed it. The only other issues I had were with the translation, where sometimes I think a word didn't quite make sense, but I still got the gist of the situation.
I'd say the primary theme of the book is not sadness, it's hope. Despite tackling some fairly heavy topics: break ups, terminal illness, even death, somehow the book never felt heavy. It actually had a sort of comforting charm to it, like hearing bad news gently spoken by a loved one. The impact is softened. Before reading I thought this one might upset me and ruin the challenge, but I finished it last night and I'm excited to read the rest of the series!
The characters are quite interesting and easy to love, which is good because I'd say it's an entirely character driven story. The book is broken up into four sub-stories, but they're all chronological, taking place the same year and most characters appear in all of them.
Thus far, there are six books in the series, with the first in 2015 and the latest in 2024.