Pleasantly surprised with this drama due to its solid storyline. I feel that many historical dramas have very similar storylines - either love story between a prince and commoner/outsider, uncovering court intrigue, or power struggle to inherit or usurp the throne. This drama had a fresh spin on these storylines. You can get a sense of where the story is heading, but can't really predict the details. There was also a solid ending, which I feel like I can't say for many historic dramas. There aren't many loose strings, and I feel like almost every character gets a satisfactory ending (note - I'm not implying happy or sad with satisfactory. I mean that I feel that the ending does the characters and story justice). Highly recommend this drama.

Strengths:
1. Storyline - see above. Also, I don't think drama is super draggy either. I did skip through a lot of the antagonists' scheming, but mostly because I really wanted to know what twists they were going to put in the story.
2. Bai Lu's acting - she does an amazing job balancing serious vs light-hearted matters.
3. Secondary characters' acting - Zhao Wang, Xiao Qin, Yan Bin, Tai Hou, etc are all really good. They're pretty funny and lovable.

Some aspects that I would warn about:
1. Male lead's acting (Lai Yi) takes a little getting used to...he's a good actor, don't get me wrong, but I don't think he's used to having a lead role. Bai Lu is such a strong actress, that when his acting is juxtaposed with her's, it falls a little short. I do think his acting is a lot better the second half of the drama, where his character becomes more open and less rigid. I know some people are turned off by his acting, but I would encourage you to give this drama a try. I do think it's worth it.
2. Music is subpar. I think I've been spoiled by beautiful OSTs from this year's dramas (e.g., Go Ahead, Love & Redemption, Eternal Love of Dreams/ Pillow Book). The music that do have is pretty good, but I think there are only ~3 songs
3. Not exactly related to the drama, but I would NOT recommend watching episode previews (especially the ones from Tencent). They totally give away the entire story...grrr regret watching those.

TLDR: highly recommend this drama because of its fresh storyline and lighthearted, comedic nature.Please don't be dissuaded with an 8.0 rating...I'm pretty conservative with ratings. 10.0 is Nirvana in Fire level, 9.0 is anything close to NIF but a bit short.