STORY:

Generally the plot for me kind of failed? The biggest storylines include the romance between Tong Wei and Xiao Fei, Tong Wei trying to clear her father's name (and her career at CAEA), and Xiao Fei's family business. While everything was addressed and covered, it just didn't seem to flow smoothly throughout the series and the show didn't really captivate me enough to want to care.

-Romance wise - things seemed moderately realistic. Tong Wei is this super successful, young woman who has tons of people falling for her, but she doesn't show interest in anyone until this rebel, bad boy, etc etc. Xiao Fei shows up in her life and shows that he's more than he's let on. During their relationship, I really just felt like things were not that compatible between the two. I can understand why story wise they'd fall for each other, but just their general personalities definitely collided (which is obvious by the fights and whatnot that happen), but there was never a moment that I was like "oh yeah, these two are made for each other." Also as "strong" of a woman Tong Wei was supposed to be, I feel like once she and Xiao Fei got together, she definitely lost a lot of that "strong" ness and got pushed around by Xiao Fei A LOT.

- CAEA - the whole point of Tong Wei working so hard to become who she was was two sided - 1) to meet a higher up at CAEA's New York office and find out what happened with her father 2) To work with Jonathan - the person who inspired her to become a Negotiator. While both of these main points were eventually addressed, it just seemed like things were crammed into the last few episodes and things didn't progress smoothly.

- X Group - Xiao Fei's family business story line was fairly predictable. The heir to the business who wants nothing to do with it, the overworking father who dedicates everything in his life to the business, the scheming family member who wants to take over, etc. Nothing mind-blowing here
ACTING:

Yang Mi - this being her first drama post Eternal Love, I'm sure a lot of people had high hopes for her because Eternal Love was such a huge success. Honestly, while she didn't do a bad job, there was nothing noteworthy about this role. Her character starts off being a strong business oriented Negotiator, but as the story progresses, her personality becomes much more muted and she loses a lot of the fire in her that makes people like her at the beginning.

Zi Tao - I never really listened to EXO so this was my first exposure to him. I think his acting was good, but I didn't really care for his character's personality - so I'm not sure if that falls under him or the screenwriters. His character was that typical "I get what I want" kind of person and yes he has a soft side that's very loyal and caring, but he was way too pushy for me throughout the show (literally he would push and pull Tong Wei around when he'd put his arm around her). I think for both of the characters having very strong personality traits, Zi Tao could have dialed it back a bit because eventually his character definitely overtook Tong Wei's character and in a lot of instances she fell into the background.

Other Characters: honestly I think the only characters I didn't mind were Shang Bi Chen and Tian Tian (after Tong Wei and Xiao Fei get together, because before that she was super annoying). Most of the other characters were all just pushy and and obnoxious (Tian Yu and Chen Xi especially). Normally there's at least one or two side characters that I really like and here they were all just meh for me.

REWATCH:

I honestly probably wouldn't rewatch this drama. Overall it wasn't a bad drama, but it was just kind of mindless almost? It's not hard to follow and there's no crazy twists and turns that make you freak out. It's just a fairly generic romance/business drama. Not a must watch, but it's a good way to pass a few days/week