Only for Love

Typical CEO story, Nothing special

Pros: leads are really proactive in flirting, quick in seeing their interest for each other, not shy and embarrassed abt their romance as in they're not really hiding it, proudly shows the other, good side couples who were actually interesting, cutesy scenes were better than their intimate ones, i wanted the second male lead so bad, there were other women but he did not give the time of day at all and it was a really small part of the story,
Cons: their little breakup was really silly and not needed, I didn't really understand the reason and why they couldn't just talk to each other???, the progress of them getting back together was also weird, all their kissing scenes were kind of awkward (had her eyes open like a lot), for me personally it was not the greatest chemistry but so many loved it so might just be me,
a lot of business stuff which wasn't too bad but bored me near the middle-end,

I love the journalist as a female lead plot and I was going in expecting a lot as it was really popular. Their chemistry was nothing special to me, especially during the kiss scenes. The thing that disappointed me the most was their breakup. Their communication was so well leading up to that and the breakup was played out for an awkwardly boring long time. I liked the side couples a lot, their scenes were cute. My favorite was her coworker and his assistant, I wish they had more screen time. All the characters even the "bad ones" like her ex and his girlfriend were pretty interesting too. I wish they played more into when they all found out the girlfriend was lying. Watching that scene was lowkey pretty awkward to me, I wish there was like a better revenge. Even though I loved the second male lead, I thought his involvement in the story was also out of nowhere and felt off the rest of the show. When he first showed up, I expected him to be a small side part but he ended appearing up so much (not complaining). Overall, I genuinely was interested and enjoyed it throughout. I think it's just a classic cold CEO story. I rated it 8/10 right after I finished but writing the review 2 days later, I forgot a lot about the story already and would give it a solid 7.5.

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Bailu and dylan Wang could've created history together , but ....

This drama already has so countless reviews posted by viewers .. so I don't know if I can add anything groundbreaking, So instead of a formal review I will pour my personal thoughts about the cast , characters and plot .. if we have something in common then good otherwise we aren't missing out on anything anyway.


Honestly, seeing Bai Lu and Dylan Wang together felt like dream casting for many fans, including me And acting wise, they delivered better than my expectations... Their chemistry was good, and visually they fit the roles perfectly. but ... A drama can't really survive without a good story line (actually calling it a storyline is a sin) .. if leads are the face of a drama body ..the storyline is its backbone Unfortunately, the backbone here was painfully weak.
in fact I am not convinced it was written by a mature person. It felt almost like an eight grader early teenager writing her romantic fantasies later being polished and turned into a script.
The corporate background especially made little sense.. like the drama has a modern corporate romance but the way this aspect is exploited to the point of ridiculing viewers' intellect was so audacious... I mean Five women from a finance magazine somehow end up paired with five men from a single venture capital company. The odds were so ridiculous it felt like the rest of the professional world vanished in an apocalypse and only these ten people survived. Even after forcing this setup, the romance still lacked depth.


The business side was equally unconvincing. There was barely any understanding of corporate etiquette or how the finance world actually works. Endless meetings filled with repetitive deal talk and exaggerated praise were apparently meant to represent venture capital work. It felt more like a surface-level imitation of the corporate world rather than a believable setting.


I hoped the characters might redeem the story, but sadly that wasn’t the case. The FL, who was initially introduced as smart and career-focused, ends up throwing away her dignity just to get revenge on a useless ex. The ML constantly fails to communicate clearly and drags a misunderstanding for far too long. A best friend who keeps screwing the ML's best friend but asks the FL to deceive the ML with her fake act of love destroying her love life multiple times on multiple occasions , lastly portrayed as a very good and supporting friend...you kid me not!!


In the end, the cast was fantastic, but the characters they were given were so weak and inconsistent that it took away the very charm of it. And when the writing collapses like that, even the best actors cannot completely save the drama. 🎭

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Let me save you the trouble of watching this drama the way I wish someone had saved me.

This show runs 36 episodes. Thirty-one of those episodes exist purely to test your patience. The last five? Actually decent. Was it worth the journey? Absolutely not.

Let's start with the foundation this drama was built on *miscommunication and misunderstandings*, stacked on top of each other like a Jenga tower nobody ever wanted to play. These two leads could not communicate their way out of a paper bag. A simple conversation would have cut this show to 10 episodes. But no. WE SUFFER.

Then there's the FL. Something felt off about her from the beginning and I couldn't place it... until much later when it's revealed she had ulterior motives for approaching the ML. Looking back? The signs were there. A woman aggressively pursuing a man with that kind of unhinged energy doesn't just happen for love. It happens because she wants something.

And the best friend. Oh, the best friend. If bad advice were a profession, she'd be a CEO. Every terrible decision this FL made had her best friend's fingerprints all over it.

For the main lead, I gotta say he deserved better. Frankly, he deserved a different drama entirely.

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Ordinary sweet love story but did not really catch interest.

I am honestly so disappointed how it all went to certain extent. The drama was good only because it had all the popular and highly anticipated actors in it. Yeah, we had a lots of famous figures in it, who are quite popular in lots of famous dramas which have got the best drama recognition from viewers. But the story was disappointing.
Looking back at the comment section, you can guess, how much highly anticipated drama this was, so maybe that's the reason for the heavy disappointed, probably because we expected too much.
Now, coming to WHY DISAPPOINTING?

- Character sketch: Apparently, the character sketch of fl, and her bestie disappointed me the most in the whole story. One is weak and dumb when misunderstandings stand, other is worse in giving advices, and barely held her own relationship. It kinda annoyed me that everytime, their male partners were the one taking initiative, yet they kept acting as if they were being ignored and excluded.

- Plot- too ordinary, too flat, too uninteresting. Once again I would say, it barely got so many viewers because it had popular actors, literally so many popular actors. Even the supporting characters acting mother, father and colleagues are quite famous. That's the only reason it was continued by so many and not dropped. Mainly because we expected since it has our fav actors. The plot seemed a lot draggy.
I am guessing all of the popular actors took this because they wanted to expand their reach internationally, since these kinda modern sweet love stories attract the foreign viewers first, that isthe genre us foreign viewers all started with, when we entered the Cdrama industry. But to the regular viewers, who have been regular watchers of their dramas, it turned out to be a flop :(
Umm, that's all I guess was there to it. That was my personal opinion, I hope, you would have happy time seeing this, and it won't seem disappointment to you, like it did to us. Happy watching!

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Would I recommend this drama?

If you want to watch a realistic drama, move over, this is not for you . If you want to watch fluffy make your heart smile drama (and generate laughters), then yes I will recommend you to watch this.

The pull and push in the ML and FL relationship is just so awkward and draggy. But don't worry, this drama gets better and better.

I read some parts the novel as I finished watching ep 20 to see which one is worse, the drama or the novel. The answer is, the novel by heaps! Why? Because the novel has no Bai Lu and Dylan. At first I thought this was an adaptation of an anime, so I was surprised to find out it's a novel. The novel is so badly written, so cringy.

I would certainly have dropped this drama after just 1 or 2 episodes if not because I love Bai Lu and how good looking Dylan is as the CEO. In fact, I wouldn't even touch this drama if not because of Bai Lu and Dylan.

The couple with the best storyline is actually ML's niece with the professor. The niece is the youngest amongst the 3 female leads, yet she's the only mature one (with FL's best friend being the worst of all).

The business side of the story is actually not too bad.

CONS:
1. FL continuedly lied to ML all the way (well so far anyway, I'm at ep 20 now).
2. The second leads (Shan Shan and Mr Gu Jnr)... What the heck?!? Fast forward all the way.

PRO:
Bashing this drama aside, I do enjoy watching Bai Lu and Dylan - and the 2ML, and 3ML. This drama is definitely swoon worthy and full of eye candy. I smiled and giggled a lot watching this. I would even rewatch just to watch the ML and FL chemistry. So according to my enjoyment level, I'm giving this a 9 (the novel I would give a 4.5!)

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Frustrating and Draggy

This storyline had potential, but there are so many things that dragged this series down that made it so frustrating to watch. I skipped through a lot of it. The cast and acting wasn't the problem - it's the script writing that is ridiculous and insulting to the viewer's intelligence.

Positives (not many):
- ML (Dylan Wang), I watched it just for him. But his voice did not fit the character (they should have used a voice actor to dub him)
- 3rd FL (the niece Qin Shi Yue) - she started out super annoying acting like a toddler w/ the constant whining, tattling and stomping her feet, but that eventually subsided and she becomes quite endearing

Negatives:
- Main couple's chemistry wasn't great. He's supposed to be the older, successful, idolized one and she as the young bubbly one just starting her career. But she appeared older than him so it seemed awkward, like a big sister and little brother dynamic.
- ML's wardrobe was just terrible - nothing fit him properly! As another reviewer commented, it looked like he was borrowing his older brother's clothes
- FL character was so damn annoying - it's not bad acting on the actress's part, it's the scrip writing that made no sense. One minute she's smart, aggressive and outright daring and flirtatious w/ the ML; then the next minute she's a shrinking violet, overly dense/naïve when it comes to love
- The phone ringing interrupting every pivotal moment was so ridiculous! Literally almost every build up to a kiss scene or a confession, their phone rings and they answer it!!!
- 2nd FL (ShanShan) the FL's BFF was so annoying, giving out relationship advice when her love life is a complete mess
- The toxic male dominance was intolerable - how many times did the ML Shi Yan drag the FL around by the arm like a rag doll - in public, in their home, at work places, etc. Some scenes were meant to be cute and some were meant to be anger-based. Either way, there is no way in hell a woman would allow that so it should not be done to that extent in a modern drama. And that scene where Shu Yi's ex BF shows up drunk and obnoxious at her door - Shi Yan leaves a work event...somehow gets there in time to shove past the ex, slam the door, make out w/ the Shu Yi, comes back out and to send a message to the ex that he kissed her and that she belongs to him so get lost. That was just so gross.

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Staying a bit too true to the source material, failing to make a enjoyable TV adaptation

Zheng Shuyi (played by Bai Lu) is an ambitious reporter for a financial newspaper. In order to write another cover story, she wants to interview well-known entrepreneur Shi Yan (played by Dylan Wang). The only distraction from her ambition comes from her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, who is cheating on her with another woman. Zheng Shuyi vows revenge by focusing even more on her career - and seducing the rich uncle of her ex's new girlfriend. A series of misunderstandings leads her to accidentally mistake Shi Yan for him. And then there's Shi Yan's real niece Qin Shi Yue (played by Shen Yu Jie), who soon starts working as an intern at the Zheng Shuyi newspaper under a secret identity. Follow their tangled love story through 36 episodes of misunderstandings, awkward car rides and boring business talks.

I never have high expectations of modern dramas, but the combination of Bai Lu and Dylan Wang got me excited. There were quite a few scenes that made me giggle like a teenage girl, and some of the suspense kept me coming back to the show every day. However, there are a lot of things wrong with this show.

The main problem is the failed attempt to transfer the charm and humor of the web novel directly to the drama, without making an adaptation based on the different type of media. There were many scenes that had the typical web novel/manga elements - frozen characters, puppy eyes, awkward silences. As drawings, these are usually expressed with additional text or symbols. Since this kind of editing is only done in variety shows, all we got was the characters staring at each other or making awkward facial expressions. The show also failed to use music to convey the meaning of these scenes. This left us with a drama that lacked chemistry between the leads and made the acting seem wooden and boring - and this in a drama with the queen of chemistry!

On top of that, the show lacked an interesting subplot. Almost all the exciting scenes and anticipated revelations were related to the niece, who became my favorite character. The business scenes were incredibly badly written. At times, it felt like they had just used placeholder lines instead of writing actual dialogue.

This all contributed to a disappointing drama with some of my favorite actors. If you are a fan, the drama is still is partly enjoyable, but ultimately the weakest work in both Bai Lu's and Dylan Wang's filmography.

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How not to extend 20 episodes of content into 36 episodes

Started strong, finished okay, middle was a dumpster fire. They didn’t have enough content, so their solution was a) make everyone emotionally stunted, b) make sure no one communicates with each other. Ever. And c)have the FL lead three guys on. She says she loves the ML, then proceeds to date two other guys.

Keep in mind these are 30 something year old people who have all had previous relationships.

Anyway. Waste of a good cast. If you watch the first 15 and last 6 episodes it’s actually good. And honestly you’ll miss nothing but frustration at the terrible writting skipping the middle.

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