A Gem Despite Its Imperfections

More than just a romantic love story, this is drama delves into the intricacies what what it takes to be a family.

In my opinion, the drama starts of really strong and immediately introduces the issues that carry on throughout the drama. Zhi Xiao's family learns to deal with sickness of a loved one and Gu Wei learns to regain his confidence and direction in life. There was so much growth in all of the main characters in the first 6ish episodes that I was surprised and it made me look forward to the rest. (I'm not a doctor, so I can't really comment of the medical aspects of the drama, but there may be some inaccuracies here for those viewers that are sensitive to this.)

Then the drama hit kind of a lull in the middle where it went through the typical love triangle cliches and misunderstandings. But the chemistry between the main leads really pulled through. The process of them falling in love seemed really natural and their interactions were really sweet. Despite knowing what will happen before it happens, I was already too invested in the main leads and just wanted to see them together. I can see how some may drop the series here, but I would definitely recommend to keep going.

In the last 8ish episodes, the plot picks up again and the rest of the drama is really gold. The main leads really grow together and they have one of the most loving and realistic relationships I've seen depicted in a drama. Their individual strengths get to shine as they help each other with their weaknesses and there is no doubt in my mind that they belong together, not just as lovers but as family. The father daughter development also made me cry more times than I would like to admit. I think a lot of people could relate to their situation and emotions were just too real. The ending for them was absolute perfection even if it's not ideal. This drama leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling.

To be honest, when I first started the drama I thought that the leads were miscasted. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of both Yang Zi and Xiao Zhan, but the characters didn't seem to suit them. Probably because this was filmed 3 years before it was released, in my head Yang Zi already grew out of the naive bubbly girl type of role. When the FL acted childish I had to keep reminding myself that she's supposed to be 21 and still in college. Xiao Zhan also seems more of a heart on sleeve type of actor and playing the stoic genius ML seemed out of character, because honestly he's just really cute sometimes. The 9 year age gap of the characters was often forgotten because the leads are pretty similar in age in real life. However, after finishing the entire drama, I'm glad Yang Zi and Xiao Zhan were the leads because they brought something to their characters that made them seem more human than the typical stereotypes. There are some really emotional moments towards the end of the drama and an actress with less experience probably wouldn't have been able to pull it off as well as Yang Zi did. And since it was the ML's first time falling in love and learning how to love, being able to see all of the heart wrenching feelings flit across Xiao Zhan's face during the difficult moments made his character a lot more relatable.

I'm just going to rant a little about the side characters. I wish there was more development for them because their characters were interesting and had potential, but it fell very flat. Their stories were not concluded well either. It just kind of wrapped everyone else up as they ended happily ever after... probably.... However, I'm always down for a happy ending so it's not too big of a deal :)

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