I will never find a novel better than the First Frost✋🏼☹️ The way I sobbed while reading it—my eyes turned red, and yet, I couldn’t STOP. Every word, every moment between them shattered me, but I kept going because it was just that beautiful. You will never, find a man like Sang Yan. I mean NEVER The way he treats Wen Yifan. He put her feelings and priorities above everything and never, not even once, got mad at her. This man isn’t just a green flag he’s the whole damn forest.🥹🫶🏼
The chemistry, the way their relationship develops—it’s just perfection.Nothing hits harder than a second-chance romance—but only when it’s written right. Take notes!
Every moment between them was filled with depth and emotion, and Sang Yan? He is the standard.👌🏼
This man loved her for years, waited for her all that time, and kept visiting her secretly in Yihe —even though she left him. And when he finally got her back, he made sure not a single wish of hers went unfulfilled.😔💕
If you haven’t read this novel yet, you’re missing out on one of the most touching love stories ever written.✋🏼
i honesty spent all of this wanting to die /pos they’re literally everything to me and they make me cry real tears. they love each other so bad and it makes me sick. like i feel sick. something abt their relationship literally cut me so deep in ways i cannot even explain esp after they got together like. like the initial awkwardness after confirming feelings to just Existing Together. sangyifan like encompass that feeling of You Are My Person because they ARE!!! nobody knows them better than the other bc nobody could have and nobody tried. and i want to die. they love each other so much and i want to die
English title: Hard to Please / First Frost 3.5 stars
Been meaning to read this novel for a while, since I really liked the sister novel about the ML's younger sister. Now that I've read the story, I'm excited for the drama adaptation (called First Frost) to come out, hopefully this year!
The story follows our FL, Wen Yifan, who due to some circumstances ends up moving in with her high school classmate and old crush, Sang Yan. They both liked each other in high school, but because some things happened to the FL, they had a falling out right before graduation and haven't kept in touch for several years.
When she moves back to the same city where they went to high school for work, she coincidentally runs into him at the bar he owns and they have a series of awkward encounters. Eventually they end up as temporary roommates, and that's when their relationship slowly builds up again. Add in her habit of sleepwalking whenever she's unhappy and his tendency to exaggerate everything and tease her, and you've got yourself a solid recipe for a modern romance story.
The FL has gone through a lot of during her high school years because of her family circumstances, and because of that, she doesn't have a lot of confidence and wants to keep everything to herself to not bother others around her and especially Sang Yan. This leads to a lot of miscommunication (and frustration on my part) even after they get together, until one day Wen Yifan reaches her breaking point and reveals everything to Sang Yan. And as part of her healing process, she cuts off all ties with her family and counts only Sang Yan and his family as her "family", which I 100% agree with. Her mom and her uncle's family really failed her when she was in high school, and they don't deserve to be a part of her life now.
A lot of the story is told through flashbacks to their interactions from high school, and it's clear how much Sang Yan helped her back then. It was kinda cute how he was always there for her and how he stood up for her against their slandering classmates. What's crazy to me is how he kept being there for her throughout her college years even after their fight. He even bought all of the newspapers from another city when she was working there as a reporter. If that's not dedication then I don't know what is. He kept his promise to her to stick around in her life and watch over her, even if she's not aware of it.
If you're looking for a cute fluffy novel, then this isn't it. That was my expectation going into this story and perhaps why I was a little bit disappointed. The FL has a lot of issues that she's working through, so she remains closed off to the ML for most of their relationship. Despite their previous close relationship in high school, when they meet again the FL treats him almost as a stranger she happens to be rooming with. She doesn't have a lot of confidence in herself, but I'm glad that once she realizes her feelings, she decides to proactively chase after him in her own way.
I mentioned this earlier, but I was really frustrated by her lack of communication after they get together. For a while they don't bring up the past, and she tries to take care of all her problems on her own without involving Sang Yan. Of course there's a reason for it; when her past trauma is revealed at the end, it helped to frame her earlier actions, but still I can't say I really enjoyed the romance. To me their relationship really starts after she tells him everything, but that happens pretty close to the end of the novel. This line from the novel sums up her behavior really well: She just wanted to be good to him, to keep the unsightly parts of her life far away from him, to make him feel that being with her was an easy and ordinary thing, to make him want to stay with her forever.
I really liked Sang Yan's character though. It's a huge difference from how he was portrayed in the Hidden Love drama, where he was goofy and immature. In the story he's super arrogant but in an endearing way, like I can't believe he just said that but it's such a Sang Yan thing to say. That makes his bragging about their relationship to his friends all the funnier later, cause he goes from a confident man to someone who seems awfully whipped by his girlfriend.
This story is written at the same time that the events of the Hidden Love novel take place, so it was interesting to see Sang Zhi and Duan Jiaxu's relationship from Sang Yan's point of view, and Sang Zhi makes fairly frequent appearances in this story as well.
More than anything, it's the moments where Wen Yifan confronts her family that struck a chord with me rather than any of her interactions with Sang Yan, so I'll end my review with the scene where she finally talks to her mom at the end:
“You made me constantly doubt myself,” Wen Yifan murmured, “Why? Why is it like this?”
Why indeed.
Compared to me, my mother loves other people’s children more.
Where exactly am I lacking?
Did I do something wrong?
Am I not good enough?
Am I not worthy of being loved at all?
“Why is it that in this world, the mother who should love me the most,” Wen Yifan stared at the woman in front of her, her eyes reddening slightly, her words becoming uncontrollably heavy, “doesn’t love me at all?”
Translated as First Frost by English fan translators, this is a related novel to the super popular Netflix cdrama, Hidden Love. Hidden Love's female lead is this novel's male lead's younger sister. I'm giving this a solid 4.5 star because the length was just right and most importantly, this story was SO cute and SO sweet 🥺
I rate this romance on the level of the romance in 长风渡(Long Wind Crossing?) by Mo Shu Bai because of how very well-written it was. Beyond a romance, this is a story about a traumatized and emotionally wounded/withdrawn person slowly healing and finding connection. I really felt like this story transported me away.
I also appreciated how the female lead is written as being comfortable with wanting someone and with desire. Such a nice change instead of the somewhat repressed/embarrassed/ashamed attitudes in other cnovels.