Show is quite electric and fascinating in its front half, with its main focus on our female protagonist’s unconventional approach to achieving legitimacy, which had me completely absorbed.
However it does veer into rom-com territory in its second half — with a late splash of melodrama for good measure, which makes for an uneven watch.
Still potentially enjoyable if you’re happy to go with the flow.
If you’re tired of big sweeping romantic love and are hungry for something romancey but feels realistic and relatable, this could be your ticket.
Show does a solid job of exploring what happens when two flawed individuals, who are different in many ways, are drawn to each other.
Li Xian and Zhou Yu Tong are both great in this, and their chemistry feels especially organic and sparky; sometimes I felt like a voyeur peeping at real-life lovers.
Show is admittedly a little uneven in spots, but is still very much worth the ride.
Remember when so many of you asked me if I knew of a show that’s similar to A Love So Beautiful? Back then, I felt like nothing really fit the bill, but now, I can finally say that this lil show does feel like it’s a reasonably close relative of A Love So Beautiful.
It’s true that this one’s much more about friendship and family than it is about romantic love, but the world in which these characters live feels like it’s plausibly just a couple of neighborhoods away from A Love So Beautiful’s drama world, in the same nostalgic time period to boot.
Both big plus points for me personally. I’ll admit that these characters didn’t come alive for me right away like the characters in A Love So Beautiful did, but I can honestly say that by series’ end, they’d gotten deep enough under my skin, that I was sincerely reluctant to say goodbye.
Which is why I think that if you loved A Love So Beautiful, then this one’s solidly worth a look.