The Fireside Chats

I finished reading this one last night and thought I’d share.

I not only enjoyed this book but I’ve been enjoying this series as a whole. In this book (as well as the other books before it) you get to visit a cafe in Tokoyo and this specific cafe allows you to travel back in time. However, there are rules. Not everyone that visits the cafe will end up traveling back in time once they learn that there are rules in place. For example, one of the rules is nothing in the present or future timeline will be changed by you traveling back in time. That’s usually the biggest kicker that throws people off when they hear that rule because most of them don’t see a reason to go back in time if nothing is going to change.

Anyway, there are 4 chapters in this book and each chapter focus’ on a different character going back in time at the cafe. They all have different reasons for going back in time and they all visit different people at different times. It’s interesting to see why people go back in time and what they learn from their experience once they do so. I enjoy the different perspectives from each of the characters that travel back in time.

Just a note though…..this book may be geared more for adults. There are certain subjects that the book (and the series) touches on that some people may find to be “adult” content. I would recommend that you at least read it to yourself before you lets your kids read it, at least.

Synopsis: In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales from the Cafe comes another story of four new customers, each of whom is hoping to take advantage of Café Funiculi Funicula’s time-travelling offer. Among some familiar faces from Kawaguchi’s previous novels, readers will also be introduced to a daughter, a comedian, a sister, and a lover, each with something they wish they had said differently.

With his signature heartwarming characters and immersive storytelling, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?