Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series (Books 1-3) – Toshikazu Kawaguchi
I went into this series with an open mind and, after the first book, a fair amount of hope.
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s premise is undeniably charming: a dimly lit, slightly shabby Tokyo café where visitors can slip into the past (or future) for just long enough to say the thing they didn’t say, under a strict set of rules. The time traveling seat is haunted by a ghost, the clocks are all wrong and there’s a bittersweet awareness that nothing you do will change the present.
It’s the kind of setup that could be endlessly rich if the author used it to dig into different themes, push the emotional stakes, and build on the mythology.
The first book does that — to a point. The stories are episodic, but the novelty of the world, the balance between sentimentality and restraint and the moments of connection make it work. The problem is that, by the second book, the structure becomes more formula than framework.
We get the rules re-explained every time, the same kinds of relationships (estranged siblings, lost loves, dying partners or dead parents) with only slight variations. Big topics like suicide, grief or illness get the gentlest surface-level treatment. What was once poignant started to feel predictable, and the pacing turned glacial.
By book three, Kawaguchi moves the action to a “sister café” — same rules, new location — and it’s painfully clear he’s not expanding the world so much as copying and pasting it.
I don’t begrudge people who enjoy this kind of cozy, comfortable storytelling — I watch “Law & Order” each night because I know exactly what I’m getting — but when it comes to a book series, I want some escalation or at least a shift in how the stories are told. Here, the moral lessons and life-affirming takeaways never change, and the setup stops feeling magical. And for the record: there is a cat on the cover of each book, but no cat in the story. Unforgivable.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
The strongest of the three I attempted. Café Funiculi Funicula is wonderfully atmospheric — dimly lit, off the beaten path, with mismatched clocks and regulars who clearly have their own histories, and the ghost in the time travel seat adds a slightly eerie edge.
The “Lovers,” “Husband and Wife,” “Sisters” and “Mother and Child” stories each offer a different kind of loss or regret, with a mix of sadness and tenderness. My favorite moments are the ones where someone returns from the past slightly changed — not because they altered events, but because they saw them differently.
Arina Ii’s audiobook performance is by far the best of the three I heard — warm, measured and emotionally attuned without overplaying the sentimentality. She matched the melancholy tone of the stories perfectly.
Rating (story): 3.5/5 stars
Rating (narration): 3/5 stars
Format: Hybrid read/listen (personal library)
Dates read: July 12 – July 17, 2025
Tales from the Café
More of the same, but flatter. While familiar characters pop up, the new stories lean on the exact same beats: someone estranged from family, someone with terminal illness and someone who missed a chance at love.
The mythology is repeated so often it starts to feel like filler. There are still moments of emotional connection — I liked “Mother and Son” for its focus on a mother’s protection even after death — but they’re buried under long stretches of setup.
Kevin Shen takes over the narration here, and it’s an unwelcome shift. His performance injects a manic energy that clashes with the material’s quieter, bittersweet tone. Character voices, especially Miki and elder Kiyoshi, are exaggerated to the point of distraction.
Rating (story): 3/5 stars
Rating (narration): 2/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: August 3 – August 4, 2025
Before Your Memory Fades
The moment I realized I was done, aka DNF at 33%.
Set in the sister café Donna Donna, this is essentially the same concept transplanted to a new location in Hakodate, with Nagare’s mother running the place and a different ghost haunting the seat.
The first story, “The Daughter,” is about a young woman planning to kill herself after confronting her deceased parents — heavy subject matter handled with the same soft-focus approach as always. The pacing is painfully slow, the dialogue predictable and the novelty is long gone.
As narrator, Kevin Shen made some questionable choices, including giving the main character in “The Daughter” a baffling Southern U.S. accent. By this point, the mismatch between performance and tone made the listening experience actively worse.
Rating (story): 1/5 stars
Rating (narration): 1/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (library loan)
Dates read: August 13 – August 14, 2025
If you’re curious, read the first book and stop there. You’ll get the warmth, the melancholy and the best of the concept without watching it grind itself down. And seriously — if you put a cat on the cover, give me a cat in the book.
Series Rating (story): 2.5/5 stars
Series Rating (narration): 2/5 stars
Formats: Hybrid read/listen (personal library)
Overall Dates Read: July 12 – August 14, 2025
Multi-tasking: Good to go. While having a physical copy was helpful to pick-up details that are sometimes lost in the mess of names and repetitive themes, I wouldn’t have made it as far as I did in the series without the narration – as terrible as it was at times.
