Tales from the Cafe: Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Description

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time . . .

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold comes Tales from the Cafe, a story of four new customers each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Cafe Funiculi Funicula's time-travelling offer.

Among some faces that will be familiar to readers of Toshikazu Kawaguchi's previous novel, we will be introduced to:

The man who goes back to see his best friend who died 22 years ago
The son who was unable to attend his own mother’s funeral
The man who travelled to see the girl who he could not marry
The old detective who never gave his wife that gift . . .

This beautiful, simple tale tells the story of people who must face up to their past, in order to move on with their lives. Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

Review

This is a follow on from the first book Before The Coffee Gets Cold which I previously reviewed.

The premise of the book is exactly the same as the first book, but this time we get to meet new people who want to travel back in time. We also get to know more about some of the characters from the first book too.

There is someone who wants to go forward into the future this time - it's trickier as you have to know that the person has visited the cafe and know when they are going to visit in the future - you could miss them by seconds!

I did love this book but because they have to repeat the rules of the time travel it got a little monotonous and of course I could remember what they were from reading the first book. As this book is a little shorter than the last one, there are fewer words and a lot of them repeated. I guess this also serves the purpose of making it a standalone book.  Around half way through there was a story that I became more engaged with and I was hooked into the book once again.

I'm giving this book 4 out of 5 stars. My thanks to netgalley for the ARC to review.