If I told you that I picked up this book because I saw it all over Instagram and it had a sparkly cover with a CAT on it, then sorry to disappoint you but that is 100% the truth.

Quirky is probably the best way to describe this book. Several stories are interwoven around a cafe in Japan in which, in one specific chair, and so long as it’s not occupied by a ghost, you can travel back in time. BUT, you have to return to the present before the coffee gets cold. Think if Love Actually met Doctor Who but in Japan. For me, the premise of a time-travelling cafe sounded wild, and the threat of a limit on the amount of time you had to experience the time travel added an element of danger. Unfortunately, it never really seemed to come to anything. I know it’s a short book, but the narrative felt too restricted – there were too many rules for the characters to really have fun with it. Parts of it felt a little cramped, and I think I would have liked to have seen more of each story.

That being said, the final story showed that maybe the reason the stories were so short is that life is short. Despite being the saddest, it was definitely my favourite. It makes you realise that, given the chance to travel back in time, we would all do the same thing. Not enact revenge or to get the next weeks winning lottery numbers, but to get the chance to speak to someone we love again.