It seems like a lot of people really love this drama. Having now finished it, I can see why. I can't say I really love this drama as there are flaws in the execution, but I did enjoy a lot of things about it as the story has some interesting story mechanics/concepts, and there are some genuinely good twists.

Xiao En is a fabulous female lead in the first half. She finds herself in the middle of a romance novel and takes full advantage of this to hilarious effect. Nothing's too embarrassing for her to try, she expertly handles the villains and their shady behavior, and she goes after absolutely everything she wants (principally the male leads heart), ultimately succeeding in turning herself into the female lead of the story. It's all incredibly charming and laugh out loud funny. But then she wakes back up in the real world, and the story takes a bit of a nosedive into mope-land for a time. On the one hand, I get it. Xiao En's spent 3 months (I think it was 3 months?) falling in love with a book character and making herself at home in the book universe. Then she wakes up and is brought back to reality that none of it was real, none of it actually happened (although I feel there should have been more awareness on her part about this), and she mourns everything she's lost. She just...mourns longer than I think she had a right to.

It's unclear how much of Situ Aoran's personality is the book character and how much is actually Tian Xing, because the drama doesn't tell us, but for my part, the male lead is bland as toast in the novel world. Seriously. Situ Aoran is incredibly uninteresting, lol. Tian Xing is an improvement, and there are glimpses of him having an actual personality, but we don't get to spend nearly as much time getting to know him as we do Situ Aoran, so it's hard to know just what he's like. (Maybe some of Xiao En's mourning period could have been spent on developing Tian Xing as a character and building a relationship between them instead.......)

Chu Chu, the female lead turned second female lead, has an unusual if also kind of stereotypical character trajectory, as she goes from being the male leads love interest to one of the villains of the story. I personally can't decide if this was a good writing choice or not. On the one hand, there are a lot of reasons this makes sense. Her role in the story is essentially snatched away from her, which would understandably be upsetting, especially if you're one of the leads in a romance novel. It's also a clever story twist to switch the roles of the female and second female leads in this way. But a number of viewers didn't like it, and part of me doesn't like it as well. The evil second female lead has been one of the most common tropes in Asian dramas for a long time, to the point that a lot of drama lovers are sick and tired of it. It's not uncommon today to see people complain about mean female characters in a drama even when they serve an important and appropriate purpose in a story. For me, it's hard to reconcile my feelings on this writing choice, so I've decided not to spend too much time thinking about it.

Qing Feng is, as they often are in these types of rom-coms, an absolutely lovely second male lead. He does everything right, is honorable and kind and a loyal friend, and he has a very hard time of it, lol. What sets him apart from so many other second male leads though is that while he starts the drama liking Chu Chu then switches his affections to Xiao En, his true love...actually isn't even in this novel at all. This is an incredibly unique twist that works well (even if I have a few quibbles around it). It can get hard watching so many lovely second male leads end up alone at the end of the drama, but that is luckily not a problem with this drama. Since the woman he really loves is from a different novel, you don't have to be sad for him that it didn't work out with Chu Chu or Xiao En, because Xiao En is such a good friend that once she gets back to the real world, she doesn't rest until he gets his happy ending. (This is one of those drama exceptions where a second male lead gets an ending that is truly deserving of his wonderfulness.)

The part of the drama that is the most flawed is all of the business and family drama. The real-world storyline around Tian Xing's family and his father's company could be a real slog, and I did a lot of skipping/fast forwarding through it during much of the first half of the drama. The business machinations and family drama were simultaneously boring and irritating. But then the sister's plotline became both interesting and quite heartbreaking, and I found myself slowly becoming invested in the family dysfunction. There's a lot of bitterness and distrust and hurtful behavior to go around, and it makes for a very sad family portrait. It may have been the actress portrayal (probably) that helped bring me around, but I felt a lot of sympathy for the sister. (Not enough to forgive any of her behavior but definitely enough to understand her better and hope she will change her ways and live her life differently.) I didn't have any hope for the rest of Tian Xing's family, sadly. Mom does have the tiniest bit of an epiphany about the role she's played towards the end, which is good, but I honestly was too apathetic about her to feel very invested in her change of heart.

The finale was surprisingly great. Lots of good storytelling choices. From the leads going straight to the courthouse to get married sans wedding ceremony to having a hitchhiking, camp-out honeymoon of all things! (I was seriously expecting that writing choice to not go well, but it was surprisingly romantic and appropriate for our leads.) And the sendoff for Qingfeng was perfection. It made me teary-eyed.

Despite the drama's faults, I understand why so many people love Lost Romance. It pulled off a lot of really good and unexpected twists. It's also just a lot of fun. But don't go into this expecting it to subvert every trope and avoid all the stereotypes of the typical rom-com Asian drama, because while it does subvert a lot of tropes and stereotypes, some are still alive and well in this drama.