Before the Coffee Gets Cold
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Arina Ii
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Written by:
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Toshikazu Kawaguchi
About this listen
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 AudioYou may also enjoy...
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What listeners say about Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- CKH
- 2022-07-03
Emotional Magical Realism
The time travel premise of this novel is unique, you can only travel back in time but cannot leave the chair you are sitting in and only have the time that it takes before your cup of coffee goes cold. working with those (and other) challenging time travelling parameters this is a novel with four interlinked stories of people that did the short visits in time at a time of huge personal emotional devestation.
It is a beautifully written novel, slow moving, but the traditional values of the characters meant that I was almost irritated (especially the last story where I failed to see why the character made the choices she did) and therefore I found the emotions too over wrought/maudlin, and the optimistic endings too "happy ever after".
Narration was truly superb.
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Overall
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Performance
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- breakfasteater
- 2024-08-06
slow to warm up
wow, I didn't think I would like it. It started off slow and a bit confusing, but the ending was worth it.
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Overall
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- Lizzie
- 2023-02-21
Story was great
a beautiful magical realist story about healing. But the performance was just a little too slow for me
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- maria juliana gonzalez
- 2024-04-02
Beautiful story
Beautiful and unique story that takes you on a pleasant ride. Some parts were a bit too slow and disengaging for my taste. But overall a very enjoyable read.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2023-05-19
Basic writing
I’m not sure if the feelings got lost in translation? The premise was good but the storytelling was basic and everything was spelled out for the reader, leaving nothing to the imagination.
The husband/wife story touched me the most and did stir emotions.
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- Stephanie
- 2023-04-10
Really Boring
I couldn’t wait for this story to end. Doesn’t get to the point at all. Disappointing.
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- Dawn
- 2024-11-27
Sweet but trite . Peopl
1. Why do you pronounce cafe like that! Ugh!
2. The language was very stilted. Perhaps this is because Japanese language and manners are formal as compared to Canadians? But still there were a lot of cliches. I prefer richer more nuanced language or maybe just less stiff snd simplistic characters.
3. Sweet but I could not relate at all. Usually at the end of a book or tv program I am a little sad to “say goodbye” to characters I really like. With this book I thought, “Thank God it’s finally over.”
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