I generally avoid very hyped books because I’m afraid that my expectations won’t match my reading experience, but I saw so many lovely reviews about this book AND it’s Japanese literature which I love so I figured I would give it a go. Unfortunately, I really do think it’s overhyped.

Before the Coffee Get’s Cold is a collection of four stories revolving around the staff and regulars of a magical coffee shop. If you sit in a certain seat, you can have the ability to travel back to the past or to the future. The only catch is that you must finish your coffee before it gets cold.

The four travellers in this collection are:

• Fumiko: who wants to go back in time to talk to her boyfriend before they break up
• Fusagi: who wants to go back in time and pass a letter to his wife
• Hirai: who wants to go back in time to talk to her sister before she passes away
• Kei: who wants to go to the future to meet the daughter she’s currently pregnant with

I guess one thing about this collection is that I’m already used to the style of stringing together various stories, a style that also occurs in books like There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job and What You’re Looking For Is In The Library (even Newcomer might fit the bill because those it’s about a murder, each POV character is telling their own story). Perhaps because of that, the book didn’t seem very original, it seemed like a perfectly fine piece of Japanese work.

In terms of emotional impact, I thought that Fusagi and Kei’s stories were the most moving. I also felt like the book got better as it went along because the stories started to be a bit more interconnected – Fumiko’s story was perhaps the most standalone and that may have resulted in a bit of disconnect between me and the book till about halfway in. It also took me a while to get used to the somewhat large cast of characters – there are quite a few staff members and I didn’t actually realise I needed to remember them all until they started being a lot more involved in the story than I expected (I expected most travellers to be customers like Fumiko).

Overall, this was a sweet collection of tales about time travel that ultimately did not blow me away. I wonder if my opinion would have changed if this was one of the first modern Japanese translated books I read, rather than coming in after I’m already used to this genre of heartwarming and somewhat connected but also standalone stories.