Overview of Plot:-

The plot mainly revolves around the female lead Mai Cheng Huan, who belongs to a middle-class family. The drama depicts the personal development of characters and value of relationships and choices in a person's life. This is a family drama mainly focused on mother-daughter relationship or it won't be wrong to say it's focus on how to deal with controlling parents.

Key Characters:-

Mai Cheng Huan (Yang Zi):- The almost perfect girl from a middle-class family. She is mature, responsible and cheerful. She is an independent lady who supports her family financially the most. A bit emotional but determined and confident. The urge of doing her best and earn more along with keeping everyone happy around her is what she aspires to. She wants to give her best in her relationships and career.

Yao Zhi Ming (Xu Kai):- An oversees returnee and a successful person in his career. He is money-minded and cunning who only seeks benefits in business and never allow any feelings to meddle in his business. He believes in keeping private and professional lives seperate. Zhi Ming is not a type of person who always pulls a long face and never smiles.. instead he is a bit cheerful type. He knows how to take advantage of others to get his way. Money is what gives him satisfaction as he believes it's the only thing which will never abandon him. He doesn't know what is the warmth of having a loving family as he never had one.

"Nobody can avoid the temptation of power, and those who can avoid it, it's because they don't have power."
-Yao Zhi Ming

Liu Wan Yu (He Sai Fei):- The mother of female lead. She is controlling and overprotective type but deep down not a bad person. She wants her family to be happy and see them leading a rich life. In order to make the life of her family easy she did everything regardless of right and wrong which made her character overbearing.

My Impressions:-

The drama perfectly fits under the family theme. Don't expect it to be romcom though a modicum of romance is there. This drama is more focused on family relationships, how to handle them or deal with them. There are always some people in our lives whom we don't want to hurt but when these people start to think that they can control our lives then it's time to take stand for ourselves. This is what this drama wants to convey all along.

Female lead's mother is a domineering character though she thinks good of her family but her controlling nature ruins everything for her. She is a bit greedy as well as believes in showing off wealth. In her opinion, money brings happiness and parents have right to fully control the lives of their children. Children needs to obedient, they mustn't go against the parents and whatever parents do, regardless of right and wrong, it's always the best for their children, that's what she believes. Because of her this nature, she falls out with her loving family eventually. Though she enraged me many times as her acts weren't all acceptable but I never think she is an annoying character to be honest.

Female lead's father is also not that great. He never spoke up whenever he must had. He never tried to stop his wife's ridiculous acts or talk some sense into her. Just an agreeable and obedient husband. He lacks the sense of being an elder of the family. With a personality like this he can never be considered a good husband nor a good father in my opinion.

The best relationship in this drama is the sister-brother relationship between female lead and her brother. In addition to that, the leads relationship is also great because they support each other when needed, they helped each other to grow higher and to become the best of their own-selves. Furthermore, they respected one another's career and family. They never meddle in one another's problems yet always remain supportive of each other. Their relationship developed slowly yet firmly.

Grandma Mai is also a worth praising character here. She is the wisest person in this drama. She was an emotional support to both Cheng Huan and Zhi Ming.

"We are free to cry, but we must cry with good reasons."
-Grandma Mai

And there is one more good character and that is the secretary and best friend of Zhi Ming. He is such a fun boy and never failed to make me smile everytime he was on screen.

Female lead's ex is one of the worst character, the boy has no backbone. He wants to marry Cheng Huan but can't deal with his own parents, neither want to built his own career nor respects Huan's career, playing games all day and still wants to marry her. Initially, he looks like a cute and lovely boy but as the story develops more his inability to take stand for right thing came into light.
"Only love can not provide everything in life, one needs to be realistic and also work hard to be financially independent."

Secondary leads' relationship is more looks like a filler to me which was definitely not needed. Their chemistry seems awkward and I couldn't make myself invested in their relationship.

There are also few complaints I have. Firstly, Xu Kai as being the male lead has very less screen time especially in first half. If we analyze justly, he even has less screen time than the female lead's mother who is listed as support role. Honestly speaking, female lead's mother seems the only main character here and other are looking like support characters including female lead and male lead. Apart from that, his back story wasn't handled well as a main lead.

Additionally, I didn't like the take of drama on parents mistakes. The drama tries to justify wrong actions of parents in the name of them being parents and demands forgiveness and a second chance for them no matter how misdeed they did in past.

For example, Huan's ex's father had an extramarital affair with his secretary. When they get caught then the drama takes an u-turn on his actions after he was betrayed by his own lover. He started to singing praise for Huan and drama tried to show that he had an extramarital affair because his children are not close to him, and they just want his money and such kind of things. But in my views, it's still can not justify him having an affair.

Same goes with Zhi Ming's father. He didn't spare a single chance to destroy his own family. Had Zhi Ming not been this sensible and without Grandma's support to him, his life would have destroyed already. Yet the drama advocates for forgiveness to his father that now he wanted to change so Zhi Ming should forgive him. When a person is this irresponsible towards his own family and almost destroyed them then he doesn't even have the right to ask forgiveness or to get close again.

Acting:-

Acting is superb from all of the cast. Yang Zi and Xu Kai are amazing as always. I have nothing more to say about them. I'm amazed that Xu Kai and Yang Zi used their own voices in this drama. He Sai Fei did her job perfectly as she made me enraged time to time throughout the drama.

Conclusion:-

I tried my best to include everything I could in this review without spoiling much. For me, acting and leads relationship is the best thing in this drama, OSTs are average but plot isn't that great or exceptional nor the execution of the story. I enjoyed some parts and there are many I disliked and wanted to skip though I never skipped. Personally, I loved the conversations between Grandma, Zhi Ming, Cheng Huan and Cheng Zao. If come to number of episodes then 37 is big number for this plotline, 25 to 28 episodes would have been enough.

"Life is like opening a blind box. When you make a choice, you never know if it's wrong or right."
-Mai Cheng Huan

In the end, it's upto you whether you wanna watch this drama or not.