I went into this only really knowing the FL - Janice Wu. I know the stories she usually picks and the characters she usually plays, so I had a pretty good idea of what this drama would be - it was exactly what I imagined. Also sorry my reviews are always really long hahaha.

STORY:

This drama hit basically all the high points of your common rom-com mixed with drama stories. Couple dislikes each other at the beginning, someone goes out of their way to make the other person's life miserable. There's fighting, laughing, crying, etc. I think that in terms of the story, it was a pretty basic drama.

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I think this drama excelled at adding the strong goals of each of the characters. Everyone had their own personal dream to accomplish and worked their hardest to achieve their individual goals while also helping their friends and loved ones achieve their own. This part, I think was rather enjoyable to watch. On the negative side, however, this makes the show even more unrealistic. All of the main characters in the show not only had a strong dream, but they were also perfectly adapted to achieve those goals with little in the way of stopping them.

While the story does show failures and injuries that slow them down, it still felt a little unrealistic to me. The FL is one of the best at her sport and even after taking almost 2 years off after an almost fatal injury, she returns and is one of the top athletes after just a few months (legit like 4 months because this first happens in their first semester of school). It's just unreasonable to me.

Regardless of that, I still think the story was enjoyable. It moved along fairly fast, even though 40 episodes is a decently long drama (especially contemporary).

Another low point to the story? WAY TOO MANY SIDE PLOTS. By the end of the drama there's like 4-5 fully fledged relationships that come out. Every character (minus Yu Yan) end up with a significant other (even the "bad guys"). Again, super unrealistic, but it's a romantic dramedy. I honestly skipped through a bit of this TV show, mostly through the side character plots. It was just a bit much.

Now getting to the bad guys in the story. I think the point of the show was to show that even "bad characters" can come around. They showed that part well enough. But honestly the "bad guys" - namely Bian Cheng and Zhou Ran - were hardly bad enough to even be a bad guy. I'd call them fairly annoying at most. They disrupted the MLs lives enough to be annoying, but weren't bad enough to actually be threatening. Bian Cheng especially. He was so ridiculously set on his goal to be with Tang Xue, but they never talk about WHY he actually "likes" her. Meh.

CHARACTERS:

Tang Xue - The leads I think were pretty solid. I really like Janice Wu in general, so she definitely hit the right points with me. She was able to be pretty badass in this drama. A much stronger character than others she's played. Her character was refreshing for me because it's rare that a FL is so powerful and outspoken.

Li Yu Bing - This was my first drama for this actor. At first I was not super into his acting. Mostly because the producers had the adult leads portray the "child" versions of them in some flashbacks. It was cute and funny, but it kind of ruined my image of LYB haha.

Others - none of the other characters ridiculously stood out for me honestly. There was also just too much focus on all of them.

OVERALL:
This was a decent drama. It's fairly popular in China for this year and there were no major issues, minus some story lines / character development. I think that I wouldn't watch it again, personally, because it really wasn't THAT different from any other drama. The chemistry between the leads was ok, but not mind blowing. Decent for a one time watch (with some skipping), but I wouldn't rewatch.