If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?
It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.
The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
This is one of those books I saw at a bookstore, and seemed really interesting, so I instantly went to go to the library to go borrow and read it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what I expected, but I think in the end it was still an interesting read.
The Immortalists has an interesting premise. There is a lady who can tell you the exact date of your death. What happens to your life after you know this date? And is the lady even telling the truth or just a fraud? This is the conundrum that the Gold children face after meeting the woman one fateful day as kids. Each child grows up with the weight of their upcoming death on their shoulders, and develop in different ways armed with this knowledge. Just how is one’s life affected by this knowledge?
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?
The third instalment of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold “series.” This one had different vibes in my opinion compared to the previous ones, and isn’t strictly worse than the previous. However, I personally didn’t enjoy them as much as I did the first two, which reflects in the lower rating. Of course I will explain why below!
Before Your Memory Fades is a similar story to the other two books in the series, revolving around stories of those who come in for a chance to talk to someone in the past, even when nothing about the present can change. Why do people make such a journey? Well, the most obvious answer by now is that the present facts may not change, but the mindset of the person going and coming back from the past can ultimately be altered by the journey. I suppose it’s an illustration of how the journey can be just as important as the destination.
The characters were of course, excellently developed and explored, as per usual. This is one of the strongest points of the story, and even when characters aren’t the most relatable, their plight can often be understood, and the emotions are brought out well by the author. The characters were certainly a little bit more specific and less general here in their problems, so I found them slightly harder to relate to. But that being said I still felt the emotions of what these individuals had to deal with, and this is always expressed well.
The overall plot was decent as well, and the way the characters were tied together were organic enough. The main problem that I had with this book was that the focus was a lot less on the actual stories itself and the growth through that journey, but rather overall it felt a lot more like a commentary on the whole coffee process in general, and why one might want to go back into the past. There was still an emotional element, but I felt that a lot of the focus and perspective was shifted onto a more overarching view about what the journey represents, and how people can benefit from it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I felt that I had a deeper connection to the characters and a more emotional journey when I got to live through the experiences of the individual stories more.
Overall Recommendations
Before Your Memory Fades is another part in the saga of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. We continue to meet more characters who wish to time travel despite not being able to change the facts of the present. A story much more about the whole process of going back and why anyone would do so, it is still a very intriguing story, and the author certainly knows how to tug at your heartstrings. If you have read the first two books in the series, I’d recommend reading this one too. Let me know what you think as well, as a comparison to the first two!
Two couples, two close friends, one missing husband…
Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found.
Lily Scott, Nina’s friend and coworker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decide that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina. But Nina is out there looking for her husband, and she won’t stop until the truth is discovered.
I think I saw a friend “recommend” this on social media, so I decided to give it a shot myself. I think overall I did enjoy it, but it was far from what I would rate as an amazing thriller. That being said, in terms of actual thrill (which may be the most important part in a thriller anyway), it certainly delivered! So adjust the rating as you see fit for how much it matters to you.
Just the Nicest Couple actually revolves around two main couples, and we follow half of each pair in Christian (married to Lily) and Nina (married to Jake). Jake goes missing from the start, and Lily seems to be the last person who saw him, for which Christian attempts to protect her at every end. Nina, after having fought with Jake, thinks it was their recent fight that triggered his leaving, but he hasn’t come home in way too long. Just where is Jake, and is he still alive? Nina gets increasingly desperate as the clues slowly come trickling through, though it is not until the very end where everything comes to light.
The characters were decent in this one. I didn’t hate them, but they were certainly very human and I really couldn’t agree with a lot of their actions. This kind of annoyed me (in the way that any character’s books with opposing morals would), and it felt to me like the story would (obviously) have played out differently if the characters had chosen to go on a different path in dealing with the issue rather than what they actually chose to do. But, keeping in mind that it is a work of fiction, the characters were well-built and fleshed out, and were generally quite consistent in their character, which I really appreciated. Though I was sometimes put off by what they would choose to do, I could really see each character in my head clearly as I was reading, and this really helped with clarity even as we flip back and forth between the two POVs.
The suspense was excellent and I would probably give it a 4.5 star rating if that were the only thing I were judging on. The paranoia that was built through the perspectives was very well-executed, and this really helped to drive the pace forward. I finished this book in one sitting (and it’s not too long) as I just could not put it down. I certainly had to stop here and there though because I was afraid of what was coming, which I think is the sign of a very very exciting book. The way we get the third person view that is also missing gaps in the information really helped to deepen the suspense and make it unclear just what was really going on.
The slight drawback here, for which I didn’t give the full 5 stars for suspense was because it was slightly predictable. Although the suspense really was very good, I felt that perhaps some of the foreshadowing was too strong in some places, which instantly took my mind to some of the possibilities. As a result, some of the twists weren’t as shocking as I would have hoped. That being said, overall because of the way it was written, I still felt that it was really high tempo and suspenseful. There were no huge giveaways or anything egregious that I’d point out, but as a seasoned reader I think I wasn’t blown away by the creativity in terms of the way the plot was crafted. If this is not your concern though, you won’t mind this at all.
The ending, which of course really is only a small part of any thriller novel, but a great bonus if the author does it right, was disappointing for me. I did not see it coming at all, but that meant really not seeing it coming at all—as in, that chapter felt out of place. It all came crashing down and became really clear right at that chapter, but it didn’t feel like a sense of clarity, it just felt like an “oh, okay,” moment, which I experience every so often in a thriller book. But, it really was a very small part of the book, and the rest of it was already really suspenseful and excellent. So as an overall journey it was really good as a thriller and taking me on an emotional rollercoaster, it just wasn’t my favourite in terms of the specific elements, or blowing me away on the plot.
Overall Recommendations
Just the Nicest Couple revolves around two couples, when one husband goes missing. Taking place in the POV of one half of each of the couples, the story revolves around one side searching for the truth, and the other couple deliberately trying to hide the truth. Clues slowly come up, but not before threats seem to appear around every corner for the wife searching for her missing husband. Just what will the other couple do to try and protect themselves? Full of suspenseful fast-paced writing, if you’re a fan of just pure emotional rollercoasters and uncertainty, this may be the book for you!
Down the Rabbit Hole 