I’m writing this review after having read the novel (I definitely recommend reading it if you haven’t yet).
It still fascinates me how someone in China must have read that novel and said to themselves YES this must be turned into a Drama... but I’m thankful for whoever did it. Even though it would have been nice if it would have been shot somewhere else so we could have at least gotten a tiny glimpse of skin-ship. That’s not why I deducted half a point of my rating though.

The actors were chosen extremely well. I loved how Wang Yibo (Lan Wangji) managed to convey every single emotion even tho he basically had the same expression and didn’t say much throughout most scenes. And even though they couldn’t give us anything too substantial, to me the chemistry between the characters was definitely tangible.

I won’t go to deep into the story, it was interesting and new (to me at least), sad at times, funny at others, all in all it did a great job at putting the novel’s storyline (apart from the romance arch) on film. There where some parts left out or altered, causing some parts of the story to become kind of confusing, however all in all it still made enough sense for me to watch and enjoy before having read the novel.

The reason I’m not giving this a 10 is mainly because I felt that some parts where kind of confusing or let’s say missing something?

Once I read the novel I figured out why/what. There are some parts in the novel where what’s happening is closely correlated to the two characters’ relationship. However since the Drama never actually defined this relationship they had to find other reasons as to why they needed to start a fight at that moment etc. And that sometimes made it seem kind of weird or uncalled for (in my eyes).

The other part is the timing of the Drama, I’m not sure whether I liked it or not, because I don’t know if the timing from the novel would have been watchable if kept in the Drama. The Drama gives us a short glimpse of what is happening right now, and then jumps into the past for a loooooong flashback until it returns and stays in the present.
The novel mixed past and present whenever the past was necessary to explain the current situation or fit the current situation. This made it easier to actually understand the story and follow along.
While watching the Drama I actually had to go back to the beginning once the flashback ended to check what had happened before we traveled to the past.

However all in all this was still a great Drama that definitely deserves the hype.