When I first heard about Skip Beat, I (sadly) wasn't one of the first people who loved it from its summary. In fact, after reading the brief summary I went "Psshhh, what's so great about this? No originality at all! The art isn't even that great either!" and walked away.
The reason I first started to read it was because
1) I had finished my favorite manga at the time
2) I was extremely bored and it was ranked quite high
Horrible reasons I know, and I really didn't think I would enjoy Skip Beat at all. In fact I don't know why there were so many people that love this series.

After the first chapter, I was hooked. The main girl at first was just like any other but the comedy and sarcasm and carefully drawn out eyes got my attention. Plus, the originally "not so original" plot began to seem much more interesting. After that, I read every single chapter up to 139 in about 3 days.

Story: It's not that high on the originality style because I can probably name a couple of stories that revolve around revenge and etc. However, the plot after the beginning, although a bit cliche, is still quite different and makes you crave more. That's the important thing, sure plot is necessary but even if the plot isn't "original" so long as the characters are good, then the story will automatically be good. Which is why this is 9.

Art: Okay, so the bodies are a bit exaggerated and elongated to show how "beautiful" they really are. Even though this a bit of a turnoff for me at first before I read the manga, I grew to be able to ignore the bodies and focus more on the facial expressions and eyes. Her eyes are amazing, it shows you all of the emotions and feelings. Since you can grow to ignore or later like me now, enjoy the exaggeration then art goes to 10. If you can't, it's more 9 since you cannot deny that most shoujo manga art is quite beautiful.

Character: No matter what anyone says, characters are JUST AS or even MORE important than the plot. No matter how unique or original your plot is, if your characters don't match up to it, the book or manga is not going to fare well. What Skip Beat lacks in it's originality department, it shows up in the characters. I won't go into great detail at the people because it would border on spoilers but as you read you can greatly identify each of the character's inner thoughts. Since this is told in Kyoko's perspective, you get to see how crazy she gets and laugh your head off at her "misfortune"! Truly an interesting main character.

Enjoyment: It's great. That's all I can really say. You laugh, you sympathize, you cry and you get angry along with Kyoko. It's amazing when a manga can get you going that much. This manga really is great and I'm sure even the worst critics (like me) can enjoy this.

Overall: 10. Simply (almost) perfect. A great read!

(Man that really was long! But I hoped this helped at least someone!)