Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Time travel is the least effective vehicle for fictional works. That's my opinion. It’s messy, and hard to justify. You go back, change just one thing and the world is different. One slight adjustment in the future, and the knowledge will affect the present. You change something, you change everything. Unless you travel back in time via Funiculi Funicula Café. If you make the leap from their portal, you cannot and will not change the outcome, you cannot leave your seat, and you absolutely..have..to..be back before the coffee gets cold! These rules are hard and fast. 

And from within these rules and the four walls of Funiculi Funicula café there is a tremendous story that unfolds. Author Toshikazu Kawaguchi originally drafted this work as a play, and this reads out in condensed, tight scenes that involved a small handful of characters. Small as they might be there is a depth and emotion only had from something written to be acted. Be ready to feel as the characters feel and more than one catch the panic as you wonder if they will get back before the coffee gets cold. 

Put any other time travel narrative in front of me and I am going to needle it apart as impossible and not worth the paper it’s printed on. Mechanically, it just does not work. Change the dynamic as Toshikazu Kawaguchi does in Before the Coffee Gets Cold and you have my undivided attention. This book is fabulous in execution and deeply, deeply felt in emotions.