Before the Coffee Gets Cold isn't perfect if you try to look at it through a lens of overly woke ideology that removes the filter of Japanese culture that influences their lives and their literature. An American mind, with American ideologies, might read this and feel extreme distaste for it. I've read enough Japanese literature over the course of my life that I understand the way their culture differs from mine and can appreciate their views enough to not hate on a book for them like I've seen some reviews do.

Each story is retrospective in some way on the ways we frame our lives and how the state of mind you view a problem can alter your future. Fumiko battles with her pride to speak her mind to a man she loves. Kohtake battles her sense of duties to her husband and herself as both a wife and a healthcare worker. Hirai battles her self-deprecation over how she believes her sister views her without seeing her side. Kei battles her sense of despair over choosing to continue a pregnancy that will ultimately take her life.

Traveling through time does not change the present. It changes their mental frameworks and allows them to move forward in peace with their situations.