- #1
What can I say except that it's really excellent? I've spent the last 4 days reading it day and night, haha. The greatest strength of this story is the enormous, enormous spiderweb of characters. It's certainly difficult remembering who is who after awhile (to the translator, I recommend creating a character glossary for sure!), but it makes it feel incredibly realistic. The author is amazing at fleshing out side characters. Every single one of them has not only their own realistic emotions and motivations, but also character growth over time, chances to shine, and lessons learnt. They make dumb mistakes, have ugly breakups, deal with rejection, and some of them finally move on to happy relationships. Romance is a point in their growth, not the entirety of their journey, so you won't find too much messy "this cannon fodder character only exists to further the plot" shit. Aside from the transmigration part, any one of the MC's regular friends could be someone you know in real life, and I just love her mother's slow transformation from housewife out of her depth into savvy businesswoman.All the female friendship in this story is like balm to my soul. MC has a really great group of girlfriends, all of whom have their own strengths, weaknesses, and character.I also really enjoy the fact that there are multiple couples in this book that get together and embody good healthy relationships afterward, instead of it being a perpetual will-they-won't-they misunderstanding between the FL and the ML. The MC actually gets together with her boyfriend quite early on, and they slowly weather struggles together as a team, having each others back, communicating well to avoid misunderstandings and slowly growing closer. ML knows when to express his protective instincts and when to rein in his jealousy for the sake of supporting FL in chasing her dreams and building her career. In every sense they are a team against the world.Downsides: While I hesitate to call the MC a Mary Sue because she does work hard for her strengths, have emotional struggles and things she isn't good at, she leans in that direction. She's just too amazing at a whole spectrum of things across the board. Some of the main character's projects also come across as way too smooth-sailing, almost a bit cringey, as if you can kind of taste the MC halo. All in all, the author is great at writing depth and hardships, and not amazing at writing success.Secondly, the American plot arc was rather weak. The author does not have the distressingly nationalistic tendencies of some others, but you can tell that they haven't lived abroad for long, because when compared to how fleshed out their Chinese characters are, their foreign characters are somewhat flat and stereotypical. They sometimes espouse views that Westerners don't tend to have (such as Peter from NZ having an arranged marriage), which is a bit jarring.Things also get a bit humdrum plot-wise mid-way. There's usually always something happening, but the story leans very drama/slice of life. Who knows when it's going to end? It could probably go on forever. Anyway, I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes the genre! If I have time I'll update this review with spoilers, but TBH I don't know how to summarize it, it's so much to keep track of. However, we are all lucky that it is a very, very easy MTL and reads smoothly for the most part.