My 19 Year Old Sister in Law

Also known as 형수님은 열아홉 (Hyung-soo-nim-eun Yeol-ah-hop Ye-go) or She is Nineteen. It was recommended by a friend and watched it rather hurriedly presumably because the semester was still on and it was nearing the end of it.

Synopsis: I'm too lazy to write a synopsis and sometimes I don't particularly make sense either so I'll post Wikipedia's version of it.

"A woman's husband is in a traffic accident and suddenly loses all his memory. The woman, was accidentally murdered by another friend of hers who tried to save her children. That young woman who was accidentally killed had a 4 year old daughter, Jeong Hae-Won. Hae-Won was suddenly abandoned by the women who accidentally killed her mother in order to split Hae-Won's future savings with another woman who worked at the same restaurant that she worked in. As they conversed, a young girl named Choi Soo-Ji overhears them.

Years later, Hae-Won doesn't remember her name or her birthday but very little of her young childhood days. Hae-Won adopted the name, Han Yoo Min who falls in love with a doctor named Min Jae. Yoo-Min pretends to be his fiancée so that his mother will not force him to marry a tycoon's daughter, so her business will thrive. But Min-Jae doesn't know that his younger brother, Seung-Jae is also in love with Yoo-Min. Seung-Jae is a young, handsome, high school playboy who loves to rebel against his mother. Seung-Jae and Yoo-Min both go to the same high school. What will happen to his pretend sister-in-law? Will Seung-Jae end up with Yoo-Min or will Min-Jae and Yoo-Min's fake engagement become the truth? Will Hae-Won's father ever find Hae-Won again or will the 2 women who plotted her abandonment get away with it?"

Casts: Jung Da-Bin as Hae-Won, Yoon Kye-Sang as Seung-Jae, Kim Jae-Won as Min-Jae, Kim Min-Hee as Soo-Jin

No of Episodes: 16

Review: I quite like this series, though it does drag on a bit to get to the point but what Korean drama doesn't? One thing that I particularly like about this series is the way the story unfolds, it is like layers upon layers of lies and deceits slowly unveiling itself throughout the story. What makes the series more bearable to watch is the clever storyline although at times unbelievable plot. The story also doesn't have too many funny or witty moments but stick mostly to the melodramatic but real plots. Nonetheless it is one of the few that I particularly quite like but though doubt that the plot is close to being real (maybe because I was viewing it from a highly westernised perspective). Overall the series carries out pretty well and has been well thought out in terms of storyline.

There are a number of complex characters in this series that I thought was exceptionally carried out by the casts as well as the interesting characterisations based on the story. The complex ranges from the guilty mother of 3 who has casts Hae-Won when she was young, the little girl who always dreamed of having a loving father having grown up with no father but look up to the man she always considered her father as in Soo-Jin's case, a lost daughter who tries to understand why she was cast aside when she was small but was able to bring up her little brother who has no blood relation to her and no family of his own, a son who is torn up between duty and pursuing his own dreams and another who loves his brother's fiancee. These complex characters slowly reveals their present and past secrets as the series moves along in which I find this series has been strong at, portraying each of these characters at the audience's level so we don't prejudice them but try to understand them.

Ratings: 3.5/5 stars

Post Script: One thing that I find most interesting is that Kim Jae-Won supposedly plays the older brother in this series even though in real life he is younger than Yoon Kye-Sang who plays his younger brother. What I find even more shocking about the real life cast is that Jung Da-Bin (who playes Hae-Won) committed suicide this year in February. Apparently she was found hanging in her boyfriend's bathroom, but speculations have also arised that it might be her boyfriend who has forced the suicide. Of course they are just speculations and not real truth but my condolences to the Jung family.