- #1
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this novel. On one hand, Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai are amazing characters and I truly adore both of them. Their love progresses in a very believable way, and they quickly come to have absolute faith in each other. Their love is really so sweet. The issue is that a lot of the emotional scenes end up being gutted because the author chooses not to show them. For example (no real spoilers, just a vague description), later in the novel there is an anticipated reunion scene after some emotional stuff happens, and the chapter ends with the ML walking off to find the MC, and I expected the next chapter to show them reuniting but that never happens. The whole moment ends with ML walking off and then the next chapter starts a bit in the future. This kind of thing happens so often where the sweet or tender moments are just completely cut off or omitted. And I can't even give the author the benefit of oh, maybe they were trying to avoid censorship, because the scenes that were cut off were in no way sexual.While some other reviewers have fixated on dropped plot lines or characters, I honestly could have looked past that if we had more on-page moments between the two main characters. The author fixated so heavily on both characters working completely separately, which is a shame because the relationship between them is incredible and the novel would have been so much stronger if we got lengthier moments.Overall, I do like this story but the author really gutted the best parts of the story and fixated on the weakest parts. I recommend reading this because Duan Hengye and Meng Jinhuai deserve a read, but I suggest skipping or skimming a lot of the lengthy info dumps.
