Le Coup de Foudre is a decent, but imperfect adaptation of one of the best romance webnovels of all time. The production team has totally nailed the essentials. The casting is almost perfect. (the actor playing Da Chuan is not as convincing as the rest) The leads were pretty much perfect for their roles, they've had wonderful chemistry as well. Zhang Yu Jian brought Mr. F's (Yan Mo) character to life just like how I imagined him to be. I only knew Janice Wu from silly romcom roles, but she really surprised me with her brilliant acting in some of the darker scenes this show had. I don't recall all that vividly how the parents were in the novel, but in the drama they were a breath of fresh air, Chinese dramas don't have parents like these two, once again I can only say brilliant acting, well done.

The biggest issue with the drama is quite ironically the writing. The screenwriter code named "Spoon" in her effort to adapt the novel to a drama has added a lot of padding, made some things unnecessarily more dramatic & there were quite a few cliche things added into the mix. I don't entirely blame her of course, the novel has a very unique storytelling style and it's really short, so I don't think it would have been possible to bring it to the small screen without major changes. She has succeeded brilliantly when it comes to the core story. What I found the most out place is the other two couples and their stories. I don't recall the novel having second/third couples. Even if I have just forgotten about them it doesn't really matter, I'm fairly sure that their ridiculous plotlines were not part of the original and those things just don't fit the mood of this drama and there is a LOT OF TIME spent on the two side couples.
Yan Mo's startup company is also probably a new invention with cliche plots like stolen intellectual property & factory fires. Quite a lot of time was wasted on running the company & I did not enjoy a minute of that.
I really liked how the novel defined the OTP's relationship. It was something along the lines of "we have just become lovers naturally". In the drama there was cohabitation, but it was emphasized again and again how they sleep in different rooms. I found that a bit strange, since the drama does feature premarital sex already, so was this some sort of "let's not have too much of that?" thing, I don't know.

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh on the writer though. Dramas cannot be made without sponsors and the sponsors will want the sponsored clothing shown, right? So the the story must have a semi important rich missy wearing all those ridiculous princess dresses and whatnot. Since we already have a character like this, might as well give her a loveline too, gotta fill up the 35 episodes somehow..

The characters must also catch the cold all the time, otherwise they cannot treat each other to all kinds of cold medicines. So yep, this drama is pretty heavy on the product placements, but I must praise the writer a little in this regard, because there were some borderline brilliant Nike & CocaCola related scenes.

I really hate forced separation plots, but the separation works fine in Le Coup de Foudre, because we know from episode 1-2 onward that the whole puppy love thing will fail & it's really gratifying to watch how they meet again. Plus it happens pretty early on too.. This is a great example how the time skip can be a good storytelling tool.

Qiao Yi 's one day in Cambridge reminded me of something that I myself have done in my youth, I too have tried to "coincidentally" meet my childhood "friend" by traveling someplace far, calling it me going on a photography trip. I'm sure many of you found or will find that short episode unrealistic & weird, but it resonated with me quite a bit.

The drama has one of the best happy endings of any drama that I've seen. Typically the last episode is about wedding plans, proposal plans & maybe in the last 5 minutes they show us a family scene and whatnot. But in LCdF we are shown their married life banter at length and it was beautiful. The very last scene is just perfection.

^
Despite the minor issues, every romance fan should pick up this show. It's pretty unique & it really gives one all kinds of feels.
I'm fairly sure that I'll be watching this again a few months from now.

edit: Out of curiosity and boredom I decided to reread the original webnovel. Most of the things I wrote in my review hold up, one notable exception is the Nike thing that I thought was a clever product placement, but I was wrong. The whole Nike/fake Nike/Adidas thing is in the novel almost word by word.
I should attribute more credit to the writer, because she did have some great ideas after all. (the day in Cambride, or the entire stepfather character)
I mentioned that the second couples were bad & probably not present in the original and I was right. What I think is a big shame how Qiao Yi has quite a few friends in the novel, but they have very little presence in the drama. The drama has that one chapter dedicated to Female Goddess, but there are others(Little C, Dorm Leader, Young Master) and they should've have focused on their lives, interactions instead of the second couple stuff that we have gotten.