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A review by thestoryprofessor
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
2.0
The Before the Coffee Gets Cold series has an intriguing premise, parameters for heartfelt character interactions, and world building that invites the reader into a cozy, emotionally rich world. Essentially an anthology, each chapter is a short-story about how different characters interact with a time traveling seat in a quiet, hidden coffee shop in Japan. The series is a promise for cozy literature that you can sit with and enjoy like a candle and rain.
Yet, this series as a whole has many deep flaws that get progressively more frustrating and annoying as the series continues. I am going to write this review for all of the books because all of them are so consistently the same between each book, it is not possible for me to critique each individual book without repeating myself excessively in each review.
1) Exposition: The exposition in this series is excessively repeated in EVERY chapter. The rules of the time travel, the description for the coffee shop, the returning character's interactions and arcs, the history of the coffee shop, and even the same prose and diction is used over and over and over again, bashed into the reader's head anew for every new chapter in every book. I hate bad exposition because out of all the storytelling elements, it is the one that is noticeable when its rendering is lazy. It genuinely feels that a third of each chapter is dedicated to rehashing the exposition, and the copy and paste aftertaste this leaves definitely feels like laziness in the writing.
2) Characters: At first, the characters were interesting and relatable, but as I read more and more of these characters, it felt like the author had maybe three or four molds for characters and then kept reusing them as the series went on, albeit recoloring a character here and there. In fact, especially in the last two books, it felt like the characters presented were merely cardboard cut-outs of characters that had previously showed up in the series. Again, I can only read this characterization as lazy writing. Additionally, the character's sense of emotional depth (which I will elaborate in the next point) is generic and insincere. Not a single character felt like they earned the tears they eventually all cry.
3) Emotional World and Plot: this series is more formulaic than Hallmark movies. The general plot for each chapter is as follows: character shows up to cafe, character has some previous opinion about the cafe and its time traveling properties, character reveals the tragic backstory that led them to wanting to visit the past, character travels back in past (USING THE SAME PROSE TO DESCRIBE THE TRAVELING), character has emotional conversation with character from tragic backstory (90% of the time, that second character has died), character waffles about what to say to character from tragic backstory, character from tragic backstory says something shallowly profound about being happy and continuing to live, and the timer goes off (in later books) so that the original character returns to the present a perfectly changed human being. And scene.
This formula is lightly deviated from at times, but not in an significant ways that are worthwhile to mention. I kept wishing as I read that at least once, one of the characters would break the rules or endanger someone else given how precarious the world building's parameters are, but nothing happened beyond conversations that used social platitudes about being happy. The plot is so generic, predicting the end of each chapter is easily doable once you know who the character is, their tragic backstory, and who they are visiting. There is utterly no nuance or craft in building the emotional world of these characters and their conversations. Additionally, these conversations and tragic backstories are built on the back of emotionally manipulating cliches (death by rare diseases, sudden cancers, freak accidents, globally large natural disasters; even a dog dies from a rare dog disease). The spectrum of backstories for each tragedy is so generic and empty, and each backstory plays easy one-note songs to get an emotional reaction out of the audience. Of course a married couple that loved each very much is going to make the reader cry when one of them dies suddenly from cancer. Of course we are going to cry when the dog dies. Of course we are going to cry when unrequited love (because of a death) is requited via time travel (the author's most used plot point).
Additionally, despite how stagnant the plot and world building is for these stories, there are a myriad of plot holes, ones especially apparent when "loopholes" to the rules start to be introduced. Even then, these loopholes do not break from the formula in an noticeable significant way.
This series was annoyingly repetitive, emotionally manipulative, built on silly and shallow platitudes, and the wonderful intrigue created by the premise and world building is wasted on writing that doesn't better a Hallmark movie. I will not be reading the latest book in the series (#5) or any later ones to come because I think I got the schtick of these novels after halfway through the first one.
Yet, this series as a whole has many deep flaws that get progressively more frustrating and annoying as the series continues. I am going to write this review for all of the books because all of them are so consistently the same between each book, it is not possible for me to critique each individual book without repeating myself excessively in each review.
1) Exposition: The exposition in this series is excessively repeated in EVERY chapter. The rules of the time travel, the description for the coffee shop, the returning character's interactions and arcs, the history of the coffee shop, and even the same prose and diction is used over and over and over again, bashed into the reader's head anew for every new chapter in every book. I hate bad exposition because out of all the storytelling elements, it is the one that is noticeable when its rendering is lazy. It genuinely feels that a third of each chapter is dedicated to rehashing the exposition, and the copy and paste aftertaste this leaves definitely feels like laziness in the writing.
2) Characters: At first, the characters were interesting and relatable, but as I read more and more of these characters, it felt like the author had maybe three or four molds for characters and then kept reusing them as the series went on, albeit recoloring a character here and there. In fact, especially in the last two books, it felt like the characters presented were merely cardboard cut-outs of characters that had previously showed up in the series. Again, I can only read this characterization as lazy writing. Additionally, the character's sense of emotional depth (which I will elaborate in the next point) is generic and insincere. Not a single character felt like they earned the tears they eventually all cry.
3) Emotional World and Plot: this series is more formulaic than Hallmark movies. The general plot for each chapter is as follows: character shows up to cafe, character has some previous opinion about the cafe and its time traveling properties, character reveals the tragic backstory that led them to wanting to visit the past, character travels back in past (USING THE SAME PROSE TO DESCRIBE THE TRAVELING), character has emotional conversation with character from tragic backstory (90% of the time, that second character has died), character waffles about what to say to character from tragic backstory, character from tragic backstory says something shallowly profound about being happy and continuing to live, and the timer goes off (in later books) so that the original character returns to the present a perfectly changed human being. And scene.
This formula is lightly deviated from at times, but not in an significant ways that are worthwhile to mention. I kept wishing as I read that at least once, one of the characters would break the rules or endanger someone else given how precarious the world building's parameters are, but nothing happened beyond conversations that used social platitudes about being happy. The plot is so generic, predicting the end of each chapter is easily doable once you know who the character is, their tragic backstory, and who they are visiting. There is utterly no nuance or craft in building the emotional world of these characters and their conversations. Additionally, these conversations and tragic backstories are built on the back of emotionally manipulating cliches (death by rare diseases, sudden cancers, freak accidents, globally large natural disasters; even a dog dies from a rare dog disease). The spectrum of backstories for each tragedy is so generic and empty, and each backstory plays easy one-note songs to get an emotional reaction out of the audience. Of course a married couple that loved each very much is going to make the reader cry when one of them dies suddenly from cancer. Of course we are going to cry when the dog dies. Of course we are going to cry when unrequited love (because of a death) is requited via time travel (the author's most used plot point).
Additionally, despite how stagnant the plot and world building is for these stories, there are a myriad of plot holes, ones especially apparent when "loopholes" to the rules start to be introduced. Even then, these loopholes do not break from the formula in an noticeable significant way.
This series was annoyingly repetitive, emotionally manipulative, built on silly and shallow platitudes, and the wonderful intrigue created by the premise and world building is wasted on writing that doesn't better a Hallmark movie. I will not be reading the latest book in the series (#5) or any later ones to come because I think I got the schtick of these novels after halfway through the first one.