Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Dona Dona

The second book in this series was losing me, but this is the absolute nail in the coffin. I only avoided DNFing it out of stubbornness. Before Your Memory Fades is the franchise location of an idea that already struggled with execution and expansion. Literally. We are introduced to a second café with the same time travel magic, many of the same characters, and the same increasingly exhausted tropes of women dying of illness just to convince other people to look on the bright side. Time and time again, themes of gender arise in this series that reveal the extremely shallow understanding of women the author has, with self sacrifice to explicitly support a less talented male love interest being a theme in a full half of the stories in this book.

If you are familiar with the film studies phenomenon of "dead wife footage" (which I will now over explain in a condescending way that reveals I don't trust you to put a simple 2+2 together for a rather simple concept, oh hey like Kawaguchi does seven times a chapter!), where a dead wife or girlfriend is remembered, either in home videos, dreams, or memories shot in brighter, more nostalgic colors, showing her to be carefree and loving and always centering the protagonist above herself usually to the point of lacking any discernable personality herself beyond "innocent and beautiful," you've already read this book. Put it down, perhaps search up Caitlyn Rylie's TikTok about this trope, and move on with your day.

Continuing with sexist tropes, the women in this book

lose their magic when they get pregnant.

This is a tired trope, and the book makes no notice of it. It appears handwaved away as all the other arbitrary rules that the author established for the café are. This book does include a quick moment to breakdown one of the main rules of the time travel magic, but it feels defensive, like the author is trying to pretend his magic system is more considered and coherent than it is.

Finally, this book is extremely redundant. Not just story to story, but page to page, sometimes paragraph to paragraph, the exact same things get repeated over and over. It would be one thing if this was to give context only to things that occurred in the earlier books, which in the book's defense does occur, but it repeats everything two or three times minimum. For such a short book it boggles my mind to say this, but this book would be leagues better if it had one third the word count it does.

For "Baby's First Book About Grief," maybe you could get something out of this. If you're slightly introspective at all, have ever experienced grief yourself, or just don't enjoy three pages of incorrect analysis about the "To Be or Not To Be" monologue from Hamlet (wild to get a reference about suicide so wrong in a book with themes of death and suicide, though the book has a very elementary understanding of both so what did I expect), read something else.

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hello_lovely13's review against another edition

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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

4.5

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neverlandangel's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad slow-paced

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

3.5

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mihai's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

3.0

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cwerber's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

georgiacatt's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

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

3.75

I much preferred the first book in this series, but I thought the continuation from the original was very good. I think the idea of returning to the past becomes slightly more predictable and repetitive but the stories of each character are varied so it is still a nice read. Once again, there is a philosophical idea that runs throughout each short story and links it all together at the end which is very effective.

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amaya_jam's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad tense medium-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

3.75

This is definitely my least favorite out of the series but I will admit that I started to feel choked up reading the ending. Not because I was particularly connected to the characters but rather because I was shocked, frustrated, and on the bus of all places.

One of my biggest qualms with this book, and I might of mentioned the same thing for the last one, but it's quite annoying how the rules of time travel is still being explained. It's the third book, us readers are very well aware of the rules by now. You could easily read the books out of order because of this.

The world of characters has greatly broadened in comparison to the other books but the book is just as short. Old characters are mentioned but given so little attention and growth that they may as well have died.

I'm obviously being very critical cus I have so much love for this cozy coffee world but, even with my complaints, if Kawaguchi comes out with another book, i will read it.

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samarakroeger's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.25

I thought this book was especially heavy-handed, even when in comparison with the first two. I didn't like that it was date stamped (set in 2030) and how every story revolved around early death or suicidal ideation. Through a trip to the past, every depressed person miraculously found the strength to keep on living! In comparison to the first two books in the series, the stories in here really lacked variety and a sense of urgency.

but then again, maybe I'm just cold-hearted.

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