If you want something slightly different from a regular drama, take this for a spin you won't regret it!
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
Promising start, and a steep decline
Good lord, what did I just watch.It feels like I bit into an lush looking apple and tasted the rot inside.
I don't want to waste my time and everyone else's by talking too much about this show. Here's the dealbreaker for this show: sexual assault passed off as romance.
The male lead forcefully kisses the female lead, tortures her mentally, gaslights her, controls her actions, and is in general a downright menace and an antagonist.
I watched as many as 12 episodes because I really thought he was the antagonist and would get his comeuppance, or at the very least change drastically and die tragically.
Didn't seem like that anymore, so I dropped it like a hot potato.
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
The storyline is truly intriguing, and that's why I kept coming back. I'm not afraid to drop dramas even if I invested halfway through.
I would've dropped this drama, but I was still pulled in because I wanted to see where the characters would end up.
I hated all the characters. Especially the leads. I was excited to watch the KMHM leads together again...oh god. This was a horrible mess. Don't waste your time with this frustrating drama.
The characters are pathetic and twisted. Pure toxicity.
Was this review helpful to you?
It didn't.
It so thoroughly disappointed me but I should have known when I saw the actors and the performance in the first episode.
And I even watched 13 out of the 16, all I can say is...
Don't waste your time on this one.
I truly believe that this COULD have been an epic, timeless drama. If the plot only had been (which I thought it was about when I read the plot) a love story of a woman who killed another man's lover and they fall in love. If the writers had explored that complicated, unspeakable love. How a woman could ever allow herself to love the man of the woman she killed and the man's guilt of falling in love with the woman who murdered his girlfriend. Wow. It would've had so much potential of exploring that stort of guilt, forbidden love and the complexity of human emotions. It would have been uncharted water and it also would have been more credible, that people just can't choose who they love.
BUT IT DOESN'T.
Instead this series turned out the be something written by middle schoolers where there are conspiracys that aren't even credible for the audience. The over-acting, so many just full-blown overreactions to certain events and UNDERreaction to others just made this feel like I was watching some sort of drama a middle schooler would have thought up. And oh lord, are there some plain friggin' cringy-ass-moments. Doesn't help with the fact that all the characters are stereotypes with no depth (although some scenes painfully try to give depth and all they do is try and dig a hole in a frying pan). The actors does not help at all, they do not stand out, non of the characters are even memorable since after watching 13 episodes - I can't even remember the characters names so yeah.
And the main female lead- The girl is innocent! Shocking, can't have a girl who is human and not perfect or dressed to be some sort of Jesus-figure. So many bad things happen to her, so unfair! No, she's just naive and pure stupid at times and the acting nor the script made any of her choice believeable. You'll have tot try hard to find a more 2D character out there.
Not even gonna write about the other characters or the rest of the drama. Hope this will save you 13 hours of your life better spent elsewhere.
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
tears can end the drought anywhere
i love chinese/korean dramas. to start with, i'll admit that i wanted to see this because of ji sung, whom i admire and love as an outstandingly talented actor, with a very high EQ, which he relies on very skillfully while getting into his characters. the first one i saw with him was "kill me, heal me" - and it was "love at first site", i wanted to see more and more of ji sung. so i did quite a few, including his last drama "devil judge", which became one of the best dramas in my book of excellency.but.. this "secret love" was the first time that i wanted to let it go from the first 4 episodes, sooooooo boring, repetitious. then i must admit, i sort of got sucked in, wanting to know how the writer resolves this or that, where it will go and how the characters will develop and adjust. disappointment is not even a word i would use , by the end i felt a waste of my time, emotions and investment. first of all, it felt more like it had characteristics of a cheap american soap opera rather than one of the korean or chinese dramas that i got to love so much. the amount of tears shed by the main female character and then many others in this drama can easily put an end to any drought anywhere on earth - when it's that much it becomes almost irrelevant. yes, some instances were called for such expression of desperation and sadness, but not ALL the time, non stop. it made this drama very lopsided, if you will. the topic itself had a potential but it was wasted, scattered and definitely underdeveloped (the story itself). after the first 4 episodes it kind of started building steam, but the last 5 episodes it started rapidly deteriorating, really getting NOT SAD, but on my nerves. it almost got us to a conclusion of the worst outcome - greed, money and power win the day, love is in the dust and that is the fate of humanity. thanks god, in the literally last few minutes of the very last episode, the writer got himself/herself up, dusted up, and provided a semi-happy ending, but was this enough payback to the viewer? i think not.
a few words about the acting. top performance from ji sung as expected, and bae soo-bin surprisingly good, but i did not see him in any other production. hwang jung-eum is not consistently good - she is overdramatic in many instances and screeching to the degree that it feels like it's piercing your ear drums (but that's the complaint i had in "kill me heal me" as well.) so i gave an 8 for the acting because of these actors.
in conclusion, i could live without this drama. sorry to all the other reviewers who actually liked it a lot, i am in the minority.
Was this review helpful to you?
Was this review helpful to you?
Story: 9.5/10 Oh my goodness.. The story is so well written. There was a lot of suspense and it was unpredictable. The characters were well developed and they had lots of characteristics. Yoo jung's husband was so upsetting LOL. Yoo Jung's character will really get to you. I don't really get why Ji Sung fell in love with Yoo Jung that fast but um ok haha. Lee Da Hee's character was kind of pathetic. I never figured out what really happened to Ji Sung's girlfriend's secret death until the ending so man they kept it well sealed! The only part I don't like in this whole drama was the ending. I expected a little more from the romance but well it ended well.
Acting/Cast: 10/10 Hwang Jung eum's acting is flawless as always. Her tears make you cry ok like I could not stop crying whenever she cried. Her acting is so incredible that you'll literally feel heaps of sympathy for her. Soo bin's acting was pretty good and Lee Da hee's arrogant image was well done just like in her other dramas. Her clothes were so pretty! *-* Ji Sung was SO good oh my goodness. He really improved from All In to now.
Music: 10/10 they all stood out to me and I was like I have to get this hahah
rewatch value: 9/10 yes maybe
overall: 9.5/10 I recommend thissss
Was this review helpful to you?
P.S and that woman se yeon i hate her because i wont go that far for someone who dosent love me and happy with someone else that makes him happy and i know that she's a good person i won't be selfish like that ughhhh and for that person do hoon i want to say one word GO TO HELL AND COME BACk AND GO AGAIN and rot in there (evil face here) even if i like the actor but i hated him in this drama and i hated his mother more cause if he was my son i won't mAKE everything easy for him and i would'nt have spoiled him like that i wold have let him take responsibilityi for what he did:( but the acting was wow for all the people in this drama
Was this review helpful to you?
First I want to repeat that I am not a very big fan of all the melodramatic series, especially if they are Korean since they tend to let all the characters cry enough tears to water all the deserts of this world. But having said that, I really enjoyed this drama! The best part was probably the acting. All the characters did well, even if they had to cry waterfalls. They did it beautifully. Also all the angry and crazy scenes were played beautifully, and let me tell you, there were enough scenes that would've made me crazy if something like that happened to me. And with that, we're at the kind of problematic part of this drama.
The story is good and classic. It's some kind of revenge, but then they fall in love. Been there, done that. But then the main couple isn't the only one involved. At some point, I didn't even know who wanted to take revenge on whom anymore. Because all the characters where somehow involved and it just was a crazy hate-story. That's also what made me doubt that romantic relationship between Min Hyeok and Yu Jeong so much. It came way too fast and out of the blue. I wished they took some time from the overlong beginning and put it at the back of the story. At first I thought I wouldn't like this drama much, judging by the slow start of it. But the previews kept me watching, which is a good thing. The pace picked up and I was happy as it was, only the ending was a bit rushed, together with the romance.
So, all in all, I can really recommend this drama. For people who like melodramatic stuff, this will probably be very exciting and good. If you are expecting a great romance line, don't watch it. It's not worth the romance, but the relationship of all the involved parties. The exciting part isn't the love, it's the hate and the things that change through time. The scary secrets everybody has and that make you see them in a different light, once you know them. I guess that's also why the drama is called "Secret". It's after all the essence of that drama.
3* out of 5* for a great drama, that just happens to be not my style of drama. Still, definitely recommended to fans of those dramas!
Was this review helpful to you?
