A review by jefferz
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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

1.5

An appropriate title for the book as I warmed up to it at first only for it to grow cold very fast just like a cup of coffee. It's set up as an anthology series with short stories about characters that are loosely related to each other so there's no proper start of end (in this book at least). However the character writing to me felt half-baked and squandered the excellent concept. The book alternates between mundane monotony wasting a lot of pages on nothing and then have characters suddenly doing personality 180's. I could not understand why each character would suddenly start breaking down and crying out of nowhere if not for the fact that the author wanted a sob moment without properly setting it up the moment and narrative (not to mention there I found nearly every character insufferable and borderline idiotic in their thoughts and actions, but again you can chalk that up to poor narrative choices). This was very disappointing but it avoids 1 star purely based on the book's concept.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings