If you loved the cozy, almost magical atmosphere of the Tokyo café in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, you’ll be enchanted by The Restaurant of Love Regained. Here, a young woman opens a tiny restaurant in a remote village, and her lovingly prepared dishes touch the hearts and lives of her patrons, often bringing healing or closure. Like the café’s time-traveling seat, the restaurant is a place where the ordinary is touched by the extraordinary, and every meal carries a sense of quiet wonder.

If you were moved by the way Before the Coffee Gets Cold explores the bonds between people across moments in time, The Housekeeper and the Professor will resonate deeply. This touching novel follows a brilliant mathematician whose memory resets every eighty minutes and the housekeeper and her son who care for him. Their growing connection, full of warmth and fleeting moments, beautifully captures the bittersweet longing and hope that define Kawaguchi’s work.

If the time-travel motif and its emotional consequences drew you in, you’ll find The Immortalists equally compelling. When four siblings visit a fortune teller who predicts their dates of death, their lives are shaped by this knowledge—much like the café’s visitors must face the consequences of what they learn on their journeys to the past. Benjamin’s novel delicately explores how foreknowledge changes the way we live, love, and regret.

If you connected with the emotional catharsis and closure characters find in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Our Happy Time will move you profoundly. In this heartfelt novel, a woman with a painful past visits a death row inmate, and through their conversations, both seek to reconcile with their regrets and longings. The slow, introspective journey toward forgiveness and understanding mirrors the bittersweet emotional payoff Kawaguchi’s novel delivers.

If you appreciated the hopeful, uplifting spirit and the way the café’s staff gently guides customers toward healing, The Little Paris Bookshop will warm your heart. Monsieur Perdu, who runs a literary apothecary on a barge, prescribes books to heal his patrons’ souls, embarking on a journey that brings comfort and closure to himself and others. It’s a charming, optimistic story that celebrates the possibility of second chances.