Fruits Basket

Most of you have probably heard of the popular Japanese manga series Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya. If you haven't read this series before, you must. It is a beautifully written series that keeps you hanging on and wanting to know what happens next. By the end of the 23 volumes, you feel like you are part of their world, that you have gone through what they went through, and were with them every step of the way. The character development is amazing. Takaya really takes the characters to a very deep point and you feel their pain. I had read other manga graphic novels before but none have been like this one.
The picture above (is actually from the TV series that was made) has the very main characters. There are a lot of characters in this series, but I thought that these were the most important: (left to right) Shigure Sohma, Yuki Sohma, Tohru Honda and Kyo Sohma.

After Tohru's mother died, she was supposed to go live with her grandfather, but when he begins to remodel his house, she is forced to find somewhere else to live. She doesn't want to bother her friends with her troubles, so she decides to live in a tent in the woods.
One day on her way to school she finds a mysterious house belonging to Yuki Sohma, the most popular boy at school. The Sohma's are facinated by her and her love for the zodiac as well as the cat in the old zodiac tale, and offer their home as a place for her to stay. Tohru soon finds out that her housemates Shigure, Yuki and Kyo are all under a zodiac curse that when they hug someone of the opposite gender, they turn in to the animal that their spirit is cursed with. Shigure's the dog, Yuki is the rat, and Kyo is the cat. The cat has never belonged which Tohru has always felt sad about.
As her adventure with the Sohma's continue, she will meet the rest of the zodiac and learn more and more about the terrible curse they have as well as the strange leader of the Sohma family Akito. Tohru will have to help them find a way to break the curse.

I thought that this series was phenomenal and I hope that you will too!