When I go months in between reading volumes of Skip*Beat, I sometimes forget exactly it is so fabulous that it's important to have an entire shelf devoted to its 20-and-counting volumes. The art basically sucks and it's paced a tad on the slow side. And then it does something like THIS--making a story about the love interest's angsty past a major, critical, and positive step in Kyoko's personal development in ways totally unrelated to her relationship with the love interest, and I cling to the books and think, I will never find another as wonderful as you as long as I live.

One of the things I like about Jo Beverley is that even in her less-good books, even when I find the overall plot lacking, or I am not totally into the characters, I am still usually moved by the sense of romance between the leads, and the sex scenes are hot and I actually want to read them. I didn't get any of that sex/love thrill from the Balogh. But Balogh's prose is pretty good, and I liked the characters a lot, and I was satisfied by the arc of their story. So I will read more.