Review: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Spoiler-Alert)

I mean this was... fine. I really only finished it because it was so short anyway.

There's definitely an audience for this kind of book and admittedly, I should have known it wasn't me. It's very sentimental and predictable and leans into the conventions of the magical realism literary genre—but somehow without the interesting prose? Might have been an issue in translation, but the writing was awkward. The audiobook definitely helped and heightened my experience reading, but this isn't something I'm going to think back to.

Also, not sure I'm loving that final story's message: It's okay to knowingly kill yourself by having a child! You're a woman! That's what you're meant for anyway! Probably (hopefully) not the writer's intention but... this was written by a man and I see literally zero reason why anyone would have a child when given 100% certainty they would die in childbirth. Adopt??