This is a novel where you could genuinely skip 60 chapters from the introduction onwards and miss absolutely nothing of importance to the plot. The two main characters get very little development beyond their established archetypes of absurdly doting, longtime secretly pining gong and oblivious, outgoing shou, and every scene that adds to their personalities pretty much just builds upon these few character traits. There’s also a frankly ridiculous amount of pointless business talk that could have been summarized in one sentence rather than endless chapters of buzzwords and drivel to pad the story where otherwise no plot existed.
None of the business in this story amounts to anything, and it provides nothing to either of their main characters’ overall character development much less relationship development, as there in fact is no meaningful relationship development between them until 60 chapters in. It’s at this point that we are thrown into this extremely chaotic situation out of nowhere, then expected to just accept that their feelings are suddenly mutual and that Tan Youming has supposedly been in love the whole time, just woefully unaware.
The two follow the exact same patterns throughout almost the entire novel of Shen Zongnian doting on Tan Youming, Tan Youming taking it for granted, Shen Zongnian pining, Tan Youming unaware, Shen Zongnian giving cold shoulder, Tan Youming crashing out with separation anxiety, rinse and repeat. There’s no growth in either of their characters, and at the very end, we still have the same one sided doting, except now at least there’s no one sided pining.
As the two of them are also childhood friends that grew up together with Shen Zongnian basically adopted into Tan Youming's family, there's also a severely missed opportunity in this novel to actually address the pseudo-incest in any meaningful way. There's barely any moral dilemma over their brother relationship, there's no reaction from their parents, and Tan Youming doesn't even call Shen Zongnian "ge". Such a disappointment for me personally.
I can’t exactly say I was bored by the last 20 or so chapters as I was for the 60 something chapters before, but I also can’t call them well written in the slightest. The way the plot played out was one of the worst ways of forcing a confession that I’ve ever read, and I really don’t say this lightly. I laughed so hard over the ridicuousness of it all that I had tears coming out of my eyes, which really wasn’t the reaction I wanted to be having for a confession scene that should have been slowly built up to and meaningful for both.
There’s a half-assed amnesia plot thrown in to add to the dramatics for what really felt like no reason, and I really couldn’t care less for the two of them as a couple after finishing. Shocking really given how much I adored the couple of the novel before this. Actually Zhao Shengge’s appearances in this novel were the one thing I looked forwards to, and he really carried all of my enjoyment of this novel singlehandedly, as the main characters here were giving me nothing.
Would I recommend, not really, but also this is such a popular novel that you might as well read yourself to see. My only real takeaway after finishing this is that other danmei I have read maybe aren’t so bad, just in comparison to this one. What a poorly plotted, poorly executed story this was.