Tales from the Cafe

I get that it was meant to be sweet and thoughtful, but it just didn't work for me. It felt stiff and heavyhanded; the characters flat and unrelatable, shoehorned to fit into the narrative. All of them are “troubled” in some way, and the author made sure to reiterate their one woe (“felt guilty because XYZ”) in case we missed it the first or second time. The time-travel rules are arbitrary to the point of being annoying, and often interfered with the flow.