Reviews with content warning for Grief - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

This was just so bland, like it was not very long but it could easily have been a short story, it was so repetitive (honestly if you cut out half the times they repeat the rules it would still be too many time) and none of the rules every felt consequential

i wanted a moment where someone tried to move from the chair and got pulled back or tried to do something they hoped would change the future but not they didnt at all, and the final like message was ‘you might not be able to change the events but u can change how u feel about them’ ok girl i couldna just told u that 10 pages in…

also theyre like wow the rules are so annoying that no one even really bothers to go back 😔 what are u kidding me? Are u telling me that no one can get over some (pretty basic rules) also also there are just some world building things that we’re just gonna ignore? If you go back to a previous time u were there what happens to the new you? What can you remember about that moment? Cause the old u just seems to vanish? And if u can stay all night to wait for the seat does the woman have to also forgo sleep just incase she has to buy you coffee? Why dont you give everyone the buzzer?

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_david_'s review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

The ideas and story in this book are great. Yet the writing style bothered me so much that I will not rate the book higher than 3 stars.

There's so much overexplaining and repetition. To prevent spoilers, I'll make up an example: "Character A went to the toiler. Her seat was empty because character A had gone to the bathroom. [one paragraph later] Character B took character's A seat since it was empty because A had gone to the bathroom." It's as if the book is written in a way that you can jump in any chapter or paragraph randomly. It slows the pace way too much in a book that's quite short.

Something else in the writing style which bothered me was that every detail got the same amount of attention. It made the important and unique parts of the book feel less special.

Overall it felt like I was being mansplained to. The book told me how the characters felt and why. I didn't feel respected as a reader.

Something that's a more personal clash is that the tone of the book is very conservative. Not in a very explicit "women should do x" way, but the women are described in a very different way than the men. The most clear example is that one chapter is very pro-life and that women's outfits are constantly described in great detail, even when not relevant.

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vaykay's review

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a wonderful and enjoyable read... until the last section. Usually emotional and inspiring, I felt blindsided by the terrible understanding of female anatomy or pregnancy as well as what I perceived as multiple grammatical errors by the translator. I actually found the way they regarded Kei's pregnancy and coordinated death (to save her and Nagere's baby) to be absolutely ridiculous and the sort of fictitious bullshit that only a male author would dream of writing.

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leahgustafson's review

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I really loved the idea for this book—time travel, a touch of magic, set in a coffee shop…it should have been perfect! I did really like the short story format where the characters are loosely connected. This made it really easy to pick up, read a story, and put back down (especially while I was also reading other things).

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I found the first story about the lovers to be really annoying. I struggle with the miscommunication trope in general, and I really had a hard time with how the woman views herself within this relationship. I had to put this book down for a while after finishing this particular story, though I did eventually come back to it.

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I enjoyed the other stories a bit more. However, I did not feel a deep connection to any of the characters. The messages in the stories also seemed really traditional/old fashioned, and I didn’t always appreciate that.

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Ultimately, I’m disappointed this one didn’t work for me.

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