Four new arrivals at the time-travelling cafe seek to make peace with the past in the fifth instalment of Kawaguchi's series. In the fifth book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series translated from Japanese, the mysterious café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests:

• The father who could not allow his daughter to get married
• A woman who couldn't give Valentine's Day chocolates to her loved one
• A boy who wants to show his smile to his divorced parents
• A wife holding a child with no name . . .

They must follow the café's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. In Before We Forget Kindness our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort.