Initially I put this drama as of no interest to me, since I'm usually not fond of cinderella/chaebol plotlines. I mean, aside from a few that I did like, the genre as a whole tend to annoy me somewhat. But then as time passed, I got to see Jung Ilwoo, Park Sodam and Ahn Jaehyun's other works and thought about giving the series a proper look.

And I guess it worked out in the end, as it didn't take long for me to like the characters and premise. For one, I enjoyed this drama much better than The Heirs as the plot here was much more fun to watch. For one thing, as much as Hyunmin was so much of a womanizer and assholey at first glance, he's much better than a certain Kim Tan in that it didn't feel like he's being pretentious for being a rich kid or act disbelievingly flamboyant. And later on Hyunmin's characterization expanded even more to reveal that he wasn't in fact, quite the superficial person that we initially thought of. In that sense, Hyunmin's character was better developed than Kim Tan and that other character the other actor had played prior. As in for one, Hyunmin's action for 'bullying' the person he truly liked was out of their own sense of guilt and felt undeserving of being loved.

Park Sodam here played the main female character Eun Hawon, our titular Cinderella who didn't quite believe in the fairy tale magic. Have to say that I like Ha Won's version of the cinderella trope; in that despite how her life was a mess, she didn't let that get her down. And she can fend for herself too, so as much as her step family treating her badly she never let that bring her down. That said, Jiwoon's character already had his own charm in the kind of angsty boy type. Like he wasn't a family rebel for no reason and his bad relationship with his grandfather stemmed from something that happened in the past. It's not quite the Prince Charming one could've expected but when paired with our cinderella, the two do look good together!

Seriously can't help with the comparison with The Heirs since there was a lot of common elements between these two that kept reminding me. Not to mention Boys Over Flowers, though I'm more into the original JP adaptations and not bothering with the Korean one, especially with the whole 'making the girl miserable' trope. Even then, I have seen a lot of different version of the F4-type tropes in many dramas and some dramas tend to overplay that trope to the point of annoyance. But surprisingly, this drama kept amusing me. There were even moments that I can't help feeling my heart flutter as we see more of the apparent love square between Hyunmin-Ha Won-Jiwoon-Hyeji. Though you might blame that to the very good ost popping out at good timing.

Honestly I never thought I'd end up enjoying this drama a lot. The story elements were pretty balanced in a way that Ha Won's family was like the usual cinderella setting aka the stepmother and stepsister treating her badly and stripping her of any basic neccessities to the point that she needed to be self-reliant. Twist here would be that the dad was lead to think that Ha Won wasn't his child due to a misunderstanding thus overlooking the problems in the household. The issues within the Haneul household was also pretty decently set, like the reasons why the grandsons were in bad terms with the elders was understandable and it wasn't just typical poor people weren't a match with rich people trope (thus they would do their cruealest act to separate the couple). Heck, I like the grandfather and I'm glad that he wasn't written as just a rich old man with shallow personality who only thinks of profit. Also, the way the different people start to care and grow affections in the drama were also written well and the love didn't just happen suddenly and you can really see the chemistry happening between these relationship. Have to say that this was pretty rare in dramas of these tropes as usually the tropes can be exagerated too much, but it was executed very well here without making it feel too cliche'd.