I enjoyed this book, but it felt unpolished. 

It was sooo repetitive! 

The rules of the cafe were restated every chapter, multiple times per chapter as well. I know the new characters may not know or, but we, the readers, do. I felt it could’ve just been said that the rules were told to the person, emphasizing or explicitly saying whichever rule this particular character may have an issue with. 

Also, details about the cafe, what it looks like and the physical experience of traveling back in time were repeated in almost every chapter, with the exact same descriptors. It made no distinction as to what it might’ve felt like to different characters. No, they all had the exact same internal experience. 

And on that note, the internal experience of characters was often told to us, not shown, repeatedly. What they were thinking, what they were feeling, what they had *just thought* 5 book minutes ago, explicitly repeated over and over again. 

This took me out of what was a heartwarming, charming, and emotional narrative. I could never get fully immersed in the story because of these repetitions. If it was a movie it would’ve been like constant flashbacks, and the same exact transformation sequence over and over, with descriptive informative interjections of different things. For example there was this line where it interjected the narrative to tell us in a medical sort of way, what certain conditions were/how they manifested “blank is when blah blah blah happens….” The purpose? To tell us that the associated character knew this information. Why not say something like “Character knew that _____ manifested in ___ way so there was no way that____.” It’s so much more punchy like that. The character is grappling with the knowledge and limitations of this thing that they know. As a result, we learn it too, but more importantly we learn what they know and how to affects them and the people around them. This issue happened a couple of times. I couldn’t help but feeling like we were interrupted by an excerpt from a University Lecture. 

However, I kept reading because the characters are lovely, and their stories and connections are truly heartwarming. I wanted to get to know them better, and learn more about the history of the cafe. Sadly, I’m not sure whether I am willing to struggle through the cobwebs of 4 more books to satisfy this curiosity.