Emma Goto

The second book in the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series, which centres around a Japanese cafe with the unique power to let its visitors time travel, but only within the bounds of the cafe, and before their cup of coffee gets cold. The original title for this book is “before the secret gets out”, and so the stories of the time travellers are themed around loss, whether it's travelling forward in time to confirm your own death, or travelling backwards to meet a deceased friend or lover.

As the title would suggest, in some of the stories they end up accidentally revealing to the person that they are going to die. It's written from the POV of the time traveller, who has their own struggles, but gosh. Letting someone know they are going to die soon is such a horrible thing to place on someone, right? And I'm surprised this plot point is just skipped over in the stories. Nonetheless, there are some bittersweet moments in the stories as the travellers learn how to move on after a loved one's death.

I read this one in Japanese, so for language learners I would say it’s quite good. Since the entire story takes place within the cafe, and the story is mostly dialog, it helps to keep things simple (complex plots are hard enough to keep up with, let alone in another language).

The second book in the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series, which centres around a Japanese cafe which has the unique power to let its visitors go back in time. The original title for this book is “before the secret gets out”, and the short stories in this one mostly involve going back in time to meet a deceased friend or lover.

As the title would suggest, in some of the stories they end up accidentally revealing to the person that they are going to die. It's written from the POV of the time traveller, who has their own struggles, but gosh. Letting someone know they are going to die soon is such a horrible thing to place on someone, right? And I'm surprised this plot point is kind of just skipped over in the stories.

I read this one in Japanese, so for language learners I would say it’s quite good. Since one of the time travelling rules are that you can’t leave the cafe, and the story is mostly dialog, it helps to keep things simple (complex plots are hard enough to keep up with, let alone in another language).

Loosely based on a true story, about Black women and girls in 1970s America who were given birth control without being properly informed of the risks and side effects, and/or being sterilised without actually realising it.

The story follows Civil, a nurse who helps two of these girls, and ends up becoming almost like a member of their family - which is quite emotionally conflicting for both her and the family as she see-saws between her role as nurse and pseudo-mother figure.

Overall it’s quite an unsettling book.

So this won Goodreads scifi award for 2024. I was a bit iffy at first, since Goodreads is the kind of place where ACOTAR wins awards, and so I wasn't sure if this book just won the scifi award on a technicality because although it has time travel it didn't sound very scifi-y. But I was pleasantly surprised!

The story centres around people who were destined to die in their original timeline, but instead brought out before this happens to live in 21st century London. The secretive Ministry that brings them out obviously doesn't have altruism in mind when they do this, though. As they struggle to adjust, the Ministry also comes under fire from enemy spies. And there's a (good) romance side plot too.

There's a lot happening in this book, and I almost feel like it could have been simplified a bit by removing a side plot or two. Also time travel is always a confusing topic to write about with changing timelines and the like. But overall a really great read.

The book's plot summary hooked me - the pair meet via a Reddit "Am I The Asshole" thread, and it turns out to they are both similarly cursed with having their exes immediately found "the one" right after their breakup.

As well as the romance itself, there's a side plot surrounding some mental health issues and unresolved drama with their family.

I think what makes a good romance for me is the buildup and the "pining" stage but it's mostly skips that and instead the main complication is the character's childhood trauma and issues with forming relationships with other people which is kinda meh to read about (sorry).

This is one of those sci-fi books that I would put on a "must read" list. It attempts to answer the question - why does life exist on Earth, and seemingly nowhere else? And the place it ends up at definitely makes it worthy winning the 2024 Arthur C Clarke Award.

The main character is Leigh, a Dutch scientist who obsessively dives into her scientific research as an excuse to avoid facing the difficult relationship she has with her mother and their family history.

It's set a little bit in the future - there have been advancements made in space technology, but the timeskip also shows Earth worse off - pollution has worsened, seas are rising and wildfires raging from the affects of climate change.

One of the reviews I saw mentioned alien contact, and although the book does have a slow build up towards this, it's not really the key part of the story. The writing is also excellent, with a lot of the focus on the characters rather than being a "hard sci-fi" kind of book.

The main character Phoebe has a bit of a mental breakdown and mid-life crisis after her husband decides he wants a divorce, and also reveals he's been having an affair.

In an attempt to escape her problems, she rents out the penthouse suite of her dream hotel, and then accidentally ends up joining a week-long wedding celebration.

To complicate things, Phoebe gets along great with the groom, and it seems like the bridge and groom aren't the right fit for each other. As you would expect from a romance novel, the inevitable begins to ensue. Although no lines are crossed, it does feel like it dances on some emotional cheating, which feels a bit hmm considering Phoebe was cheated on herself.

I'd say compared to your run-of-the-mill romance novel, the plot and emotional depth to the story felt pretty good. However for winning the 2024 Goodreads choice award for "best fiction novel" it felt pretty mid.

A retelling of Huckleberry Finn, but from the POV of Huck’s companion, a slave named Jim (or as he calls himself, James).

In the original book Jim is portrayed as a bit slow, and speaks a very grammatically incorrect dialect of English (whether it’s typical or stereotypical I’m not sure). But the twist is that James chooses to play up this slave stereotype in front of white people, while secretly knowing how to read and speaks “correct” English when with his family and fellow slaves.

I hadn’t actually read Huckleberry Finn, so I got the general plot overview from Wikipedia. The book seems to hit all the major plot points, diverging to tell James’s imagined story when the pair get separated. It’s still very readable even without that added context, although I wonder if it would be more impactful having been able to read how Huck sees Jim first, before the real James.

I picked this one up as the most recent winner of the Nebula award. It’s a fantasy novel, where a boy has his shadow severed from his body by his mother, and then he grows up to move to a city where there are inexplicably glowing doors all over the place that don’t lead anywhere.

The book itself was easy to read, and some of the characters felt easy to connect with, but overall the plot felt quite vague at times. From reading the reviews afterwards it seems the wow factor comes from the themes it covers - religious fanaticism, totalitarianism and so on but I think it was a bit lost on me and I would have liked something more tangible.

I picked this one up as the most recent winner of the Nebula award. It’s a fantasy novel, where a boy has his shadow severed from his by his mother, and then he grows up to move to a city where there are inexplicably glowing doors all over the place that don’t lead anywhere.

The book itself was easy to read, and some of the characters felt easy to connect with, but overall the plot felt quite vague at times. From reading the reviews afterwards it seems the wow factor comes from the themes it covers - religious fanaticism, totalitarianism and so on but I think it was a bit lost on me and I would have liked something more tangible.

A retelling of Huckleberry Finn, but from the POV of Huck’s companion, a slave named Jim (or as he calls himself, James).

In the original book Jim is portrayed as a bit slow, and speaks a very grammatically incorrect dialect of English (whether it’s typical or stereotypical I’m not sure). But the twist is that James chooses to play up this slave stereotype in front of white people, while secretly knowing how to read and speaks “correct” English when with his family and fellow slaves.

I hadn’t actually read Huckleberry Finn, so I got the general plot overview from Wikipedia. The book seems to hit all the major plot points, diverging to tell James’s imagined story when the pair get separated. It’s still very readable even without that added context, although I wonder if it would be more impactful having been able to read how Huck sees Jim first, before the real James.