Episodes 1-45 = 10 🌟
46- 73 = 1🌟

I completely enjoyed the first half, the second half after her marriage into Gu family was just annoyingly repititive, all kinds of clownish antagonists who didn't even make sense anymore. Seems like the writers just let loose a ton of psychos thinking like 1 year olds and stirring shit up just for kicks. Forcing a concubine the first time was understandable, the next 3-5 times were just so ridiculous even someone from 10 families away tried and nearly got away with it, really?

This left me with a sour taste in my mouth just like Yanxi Palace and I swore never to watch palace harem dramas ever again , as this was more of family slice of life I decided to give it a try but still ended up with a shitload of crap in the second half

I don't know what it is about Cdramas, very few maintain great stories and pacing to the end, unfortunately this was one of those. I used to be a stick it out to the end kinda gal but I've learned my bitter lesson so now, if it starts to go wonky I throw the entire drama away. I really tried even up to episode 60 to see a redeeming arc, something to light up the spark again but damn did this get out of hand, even villains who should have been set in their place 30 episodes ago were resurrected to display hair pulling, eye rolling levels of stupidity that even I couldn't stomach anymore and oh, it's never their fault, they're never wrong, it's always the MCs fault 😩🙄

Even Ming Lan the titular character seemed to lose the smarts that had me keeping late nights to catch up with in the beginning and just became a shadow of her former self, so consumed with "what people will say" or some other dumb shit

As for the romance aspect, I expected her to at least reciprocate the depth of love GTY showed her at least 10 episodes earlier. Damn girl I know you had a hard life but can't you SEE how much you mean to him? All of a sudden Ming Lan who can see and read people's intents 10 miles away suddenly didn't UNDERSTAND what love is, she was literally like a log of wood in all intimate scenes with her hubby and only loosened up after all hell had broken loose. This was super underwhelming for a freaking 73 EPISODE drama.

All in all I'll give this a 6, infact 5 as I'm already getting super annoyed typing up this rant, sorry, review 🙄