Oh wow. This is the first Chinese book in my life that I've read in its original language, and I must say that this was pretty good. I would rate it somewhere between 4 and 4.5 stars.
I was surprised that I was able to understand the story even with my level of Chinese (my trusty friend Google helped a lot too), but I will review this book in English since I know my limits lol.
《我一直在你身边》is about the love story between 傅北辰 (FBC) and 程圆圆 (CYY). From the synopsis, we know that their past and present lives are intertwined. On the outside, FBC is the perfect man - he is handsome, educated, polite, kind etc. But only he knows that his soul is not complete. He knows that in this life, there is one person he has to meet - CYY.
I would say that there are three "storylines" here: FBC and CYY falling in love in current day, the story of their past lives and the story behind the history of CYY's hometown. While the main focus is on the modern day storyline of FBC and CYY, the author did a very good job weaving these 3 storylines seamlessly together. By the end, you'll realise that everything links and all the pieces have fallen into place. I thought it was very well-written.
I liked that we got to see the FBC and CYY fall in love with one another in their current lives despite (somewhat) not knowing that their past lives were intertwined. It made me believe that they loved each other in this life for who the other person is, not just because their past lives dictated that they had to.
I also appreciated that the author teased readers with bits of information about FBC and CYY's past lives in the main narrative instead of just info dumping everything. The full story of their past life was included in the 番外, and I thought that was really smart. If she had included it in the main narrative, it might have got a bit boring.
Writing-wise, I'm afraid I can't comment because my poor level of Chinese makes it difficult to appreciate its beauty on a higher level. When I first started this book, I had some trouble getting used to the "matter-of-fact" way of narration and how they call the characters by their full names but this is definitely just me and it got better once I got used to it.
Overall, I really enjoyed this. It's a sweet love story that has a well-crafted plot. This definitely won't be my last Chinese novel (I've bought another 2 since I started reading this lol), and I will be looking up this author's other works some time in the future.
P.S. I have to apologise to the character 程白 - I'm sorry I thought you were an arrogant little sh*t. You absolutely aren't and my heart is breaking for you.