⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This review contains major spoilers for Maybe Meant to Be, including Jia and Mincheol's relationship progression, Jia's past, later story arcs, and the ending. I highly recommend finishing the manhwa first if you want to experience everything without knowing what happens.

I usually read stories filled with historical settings, villainesses, reincarnation, magic, revenge, political fights, tragedy, or some other kind of chaos. Maybe Meant to Be was completely different for me because this was basically my first proper modern slice-of-life romance without any fantasy or supernatural elements. I went into it expecting something simple, wholesome and funny, and that is exactly what I got. What I didn't expect was how attached I would become to Jia and Mincheol during all 132 chapters.

The funniest thing about this story is how quickly everything starts. Most romance stories spend dozens of chapters making you wait for the main characters to confess, date and eventually think about marriage. Maybe Meant to Be basically throws all of that away. Jia meets her childhood friend Mincheol again while both of them are dealing with marriage pressure from their families, impulsively asks him if they should just get married, and Mincheol actually accepts. Before I even had time to process their reunion, they were already married and on their honeymoon.

The Funniest Possible Beginning to a Marriage

One of my favorite jokes happens almost immediately. During their honeymoon, Mincheol takes a shower and comes back into the room looking fresh, while Jia immediately starts sweating and panicking because she thinks something is finally going to happen between them. You can basically see her mentally preparing herself for their first night together. Then Mincheol calmly gives her a pair of earplugs because he snores. That scene perfectly explains their early relationship: Jia is constantly overthinking everything while Mincheol operates like a socially awkward concrete wall.

Their marriage continues in exactly that strange way. They create a contract, sleep in separate rooms, slowly become comfortable with each other and somehow start dating after they are already legally married. Their romance even becomes complicated enough to require a rule about not kissing after eating cucumbers. I don't think I have ever read another romance where the married couple needed official cucumber-kissing regulations, and somehow that ridiculousness became part of the charm.

Jia Wasn't Lazy. She Was Tired.

At first, Jia looks like a chaotic and slightly lazy female lead. She's unemployed, living with her parents, smoking, complaining about life and doesn't seem particularly motivated to change anything. Mincheol starts working, exercising, preparing food and generally looks far more functional than the woman he suddenly married. But the more I learned about Jia, the more my entire interpretation of her changed. For me, the real story of Maybe Meant to Be became the story of a broken and exhausted woman slowly healing.

Jia had already experienced a lot before the first chapter. Her university life was ruined by horrible rumors, friendships became complicated, and later her writing career created another painful wound involving Yeonju. She was talented and had already succeeded as a novelist, but eventually all of that pressure and emotional damage became too much. One of the saddest scenes in the entire manhwa for me is when Jia returns to her mother completely exhausted, kneels down crying and basically asks if she can just live with them quietly because she is tired.

That scene genuinely hurt because suddenly the Jia from the beginning made much more sense. Maybe she wasn't simply lazy or unwilling to work. She had reached a point where she was so tired of being hurt and disappointed that she no longer wanted to try. She wasn't dreaming about becoming successful anymore. She just wanted somewhere safe where she could stop struggling. And that is basically the version of Jia who unexpectedly runs into Mincheol again.

Mincheol Isn't a Green Flag. He's the Entire Green Tree.

Mincheol is easily one of my favorite things about this manhwa. He is awkward, extremely dense at times, obsessed with exercise and protein, and sometimes seems completely incapable of understanding normal social behavior. This man can build a shelter on an island and throw a snake away to protect his wife, but somehow reached his thirties without bothering to get a driver's license. He is a strange creature, but emotionally he is an absolute green flag tree.

What makes Mincheol special is that he never tries to control Jia or force her to explain herself. When her painful university memories return, he doesn't interrogate her, accuse her or create unnecessary jealousy drama. He simply tells her that she can talk when she is ready, because he trusts her. The story even gives us a beautiful parallel from their childhood, when Jia was falsely blamed for something and Mincheol was one of the people who immediately believed her. Years later, after everything that happened at university, he still looks at Jia the same way.

Then we finally learn that Mincheol had actually loved Jia since childhood. That reveal makes their entire marriage even sweeter and much funnier. He spent years carrying feelings for her, became afraid to approach her because he thought she didn't want him around anymore, and then one random day his lifelong crush suddenly appears and basically asks, “Should we just get married?” I don't blame the guy for accepting immediately. Mincheol finally got the person he had quietly loved for years, while Jia slowly found someone safe enough to help her believe in life again.

They Did Romance Completely Backwards

One of the funniest and most enjoyable parts of their romance is how completely backwards it is. Normally we get friendship, dating, kissing, confession, proposal and then marriage. Jia and Mincheol basically go marriage first, then become awkward roommates, slowly start kissing, realize they like each other, begin dating their own husband and wife, fall properly in love, become intimate and then Mincheol eventually proposes to the woman he is already legally married to.

Somehow, though, that strange order gives their relationship more meaning. The first marriage happens because they both need an escape from their families and don't know what else to do. Their later commitment happens because they actually choose each other. By the time their original marriage contract becomes meaningless, they no longer need rules protecting them from emotional involvement because there is nothing fake left about their relationship.

The Comedy in This Story Is Absolutely Ridiculous

My favorite comedy arc in the entire manhwa is Mincheol's mother visiting their house. That whole section is hilarious because Jia and Mincheol suddenly have to convince her that they're a completely normal and affectionate married couple even though their relationship is still incredibly awkward. The fake PDA, mother-in-law surveillance, wardrobe arguments, having to share the same bed and Mincheol unexpectedly becoming dangerously good at affectionate husband behavior made this easily the funniest part of the story for me.

Then there is Mincheol calling Jia his “little birdy,” Jia getting completely flustered, and his mother eventually seeing the two of them sleeping together in a position that mirrors a childhood photo of them. That arc somehow manages to be ridiculous, romantic and wholesome at the same time.

My second favorite comedy section is definitely the island survival arc. Jia and Mincheol get washed away and genuinely believe they're stranded somewhere dangerous, which activates Mincheol's full survival-husband mode. He builds shelter, finds water, prepares for wild animals and even protects Jia from a snake by grabbing it and throwing it away. When Mincheol later becomes sick, Jia searches desperately for food and somehow finds protein supplies, which honestly felt like the God of Muscles personally answered her prayer.

Then comes the reveal that completely destroyed me: after all that survival drama, they discover that civilization was only around a four-hour walk away. They basically spent days role-playing Survivor next door to a tourist area. Right when they are finally enjoying another romantic moment, their parents arrive to rescue them. That entire arc is stupid in exactly the right way.

There are so many other smaller jokes I loved too: the cucumber kissing rule, Mincheol ripping his own shirt during an intimate moment, his complete lack of a driver's license, reverse parking becoming his final boss, Jia forgetting his birthday, the protein birthday cake, their accidental celebrity-couple phase and Jia forcing Mincheol through an entire skincare routine before appearing on camera.

Somehow It Can Make You Laugh and Then Suddenly Hurt You

What surprised me most about Maybe Meant to Be was how naturally it could move between ridiculous comedy and genuinely painful moments. The story involving Jia and Yeonju became much more complicated than I expected. At first, Yeonju can easily look like nothing more than a jealous friend because Jia had natural writing talent and became successful quickly while Yeonju had spent years chasing that dream.

But the story doesn't reduce their relationship to good Jia versus bad jealous friend. They genuinely cared about each other, but they also hurt each other. Jia unknowingly made Yeonju feel inferior, Yeonju eventually lost control and slapped Jia, and Jia later disappeared from that world. Yeonju spent years believing that she might have been responsible for destroying her friend's life, while Jia carried her own guilt and emotional scars.

Even Yeongdeuk, whom I spent half the story wanting Mincheol to beat up, became more understandable. His obsession with getting Jia to write again originally seemed suspicious, but then we learn about his sick wife and how much she loves Jia's novels. I had to quietly cancel my “Mincheol, beat the editor” campaign after that revelation.

Jia Finding Writing Again Meant Finding Herself Again

Jia eventually returning to writing became one of the most satisfying parts of the final section. She doesn't come back because she wants fame or because somebody forces her. She slowly starts listening to other people's experiences with love, talking to people around her, reconnecting with old friends and thinking about her own marriage. In a funny way, Jia had already written romance before, but the current Jia finally understands love from personal experience.

She knows what it feels like to have someone wait for her, believe her, stay beside her and continue choosing her even when she isn't at her best. Eventually, she finishes another novel, and for me that moment is almost as important as her romantic happy ending. Mincheol didn't magically fix Jia. He gave her something safer and healthier: a place where she could slowly repair herself until she was ready to move forward again.

The Ending Was Almost Too Wholesome

The finale is exactly the kind of ending I wanted for them. Jia and Mincheol eventually build a family, Jia becomes a mother of two, she is writing again and their once ridiculous contract marriage has become a peaceful life together. After all the chaos, misunderstandings and emotional wounds, their future finally feels like smooth sailing.

The part that really got me was when they returned to the place connected to their first reunion as adults. The story gives us that symbolic conversation between the broken Jia from the beginning and the woman she eventually became. Old Jia was tired, lost and had no idea where her life was going. It feels like that version of her asks whether their impulsive marriage actually turned out well, and present Jia's answer is essentially that she couldn't be happier and plans to make this happiness last forever.

That was a perfect full-circle ending for me. Jia doesn't become some completely different person, and Mincheol doesn't suddenly become someone else either. They're still weird, still funny and still themselves. The difference is that the woman who once wanted to quietly disappear now has a future she genuinely wants to keep.

Final Thoughts – Maybe They Really Were Meant to Be

This was my first proper modern slice-of-life romance after reading so many stories involving fantasy, historical settings, reincarnation, villainesses and supernatural things, and I honestly didn't expect to enjoy something this simple so much. Nobody needs to save a kingdom, defeat an emperor or break a magical curse. At its heart, this is a story about a tired and broken woman slowly finding hope again, and a lonely man finally being loved by the childhood crush he never stopped loving.

Jia gave Mincheol the love he had quietly wanted for years, while Mincheol gave Jia somewhere safe enough that she could slowly start wanting things from life again. Around that healing, we still somehow got cucumber-kissing regulations, mother-in-law surveillance, protein cake, snake throwing, terrible driving skills, shirt ripping and a completely unnecessary survival adventure four hours away from civilization.

I started Maybe Meant to Be because I wanted something funny and wholesome, and that is exactly what I got. But somewhere along the way, it also became a story about exhaustion, healing, friendship, regret, first love and choosing to believe that your life can still become better.

From the exhausted Jia smoking outside and wondering what she was doing with her life to Jia standing beside Mincheol and their children knowing she wants that happiness forever, the story came completely full circle.

My personal rating: 8/10 — a solid, wholesome and genuinely funny romance that I would happily recommend. ❤️

Maybe the title was right from the beginning.

Maybe they really were meant to be.