I really enjoy it when kdramas surprise me or sneak up on me like Marry My Husband did. Because I had no interest in watching it until half of it had come out, but somehow it fell into my arms because I needed a cute romcom to watch during the darkest time of the year and I’d heard good things about it. And I don’t regret starting that journey at all.

I’ve fallen a bit out of drama romcoms over the years – in the past it was the genre that I watched the most but now it’s sageuks. But despite that, I’ve enjoyed Park Min Young in romcoms so often over the years, and her warm and easygoing on-screen demeanor tends to draw me well into the characters she’s portraying.

Marry My Husband focuses largely on her character, Kang Ji Won, and her quest for revenge and a better life that fills her with more passion and hopefully a better ending – which is a very engaging and compelling story to fallow, and I think the drama does a great job of making us feel for her. Even if it goes a little into too much victim complex and the characters tend to be a little too naïve at times.

Many of the secondary characters and their side stories were also very entertaining or interesting – which I think is essential in this kind of office drama. Both the blossoming friendships in the office, but also villains would completely steal the show for me. Some of the characters are horrible people, like Ji Won’s ex-friend and husband, but the drama manages to illustrate well how subtle they are and how they manage to use people. The actors and script made them very interesting to watch while you’re praying for their downfall. They feel like complex, multifaceted characters who can look funny or fascinating on the outside like many abusers are. But even though some of it felt a bit over the top at times.

For some time, it seemed that romance wasn’t a priority in the story, which doesn’t pick up until well around the second half of the drama. But I thought it was a very wise decision while everything else is being set up. It gives the drama time to highlight the emotional abuse Kang Ji Won is dealing with and trying to break away from so she can live. But all these different side stories also give us a little break from the romance that starts to drag on a little towards the end.

To me, romance is actually the weakest part of the drama, and it could just be because I don’t think Yoo Ji Hyuk is a particularly interesting character. I thought he was a little dull and I don’t think Na In Woo is a particularly charming actor on screen. He’s just fine. he’s tall and handsome, yet often he feels like he is just there, like a beautiful blank canvas, for a good majority of the drama. The rest of the cast was doing such a good job with their characters and sometimes made his scenes a little stiff in comparison, for me.

He did slowly start to make sense to me as a person and romantic partner when Ji won started falling for him and you get to fall in love with her – which is what the best romance films tend to do in my opinion. You fall in love with the characters and through the characters. But there were parts where I found his scenes, when no one else was with him, a bit full and just not that interesting. Like his backstory and past felt a bit too much of a kdrama cliché for me.

Overall, I found Marry My Husband a gripping and interesting story full of emotions that was far gloomier than I expected from such a romcom drama. But that didn’t hurt the story at all. There were interesting characters that you could hate and lovable characters you could root for, and a fair number of stakes to make the story exciting. The narrative flows well and doesn’t drag on too much, which is a bit of a bane for many romcom kdrama, especially towards the end, even if it did turn a bit too melodramatic and clichéd at times at times.

What caught my attention most about Marry My Husband was its use of comedy for the villains of drama. We are often made to laugh at them but not with them, and humor is also used to show how they could seem good and fascinating on the surface. It shows their insecurities and inferiority feelings and why they hold on to other people and drag them down because of them, but also how they manage to deceive the people around them. The way Ji Won saw them before she had another chance to live and gain clarity. That and Ji Won’s revenge was what really gripped me all throughout this drama – Ji Won’s on-screen revenge was often a certain cathartic release for the viewer, in a good way.