Then
Dawn was always the one I related to least, and also the one I found most interesting to read about, which is a combination I didn’t have words for at the time. She was self-righteous about health food and the environment in a way that kind of annoyed me, but she also had this ongoing existential problem — two homes, two coasts, never quite fitting either — that felt real in a way the other characters’ problems sometimes didn’t.
This book is where that question gets loud for the first time. California looks so good when she’s there. Stoneybrook always gets her back anyway.
Now
Dawn’s arc across the whole BSC series is genuinely interesting: she’s the only main character who never fully resolves her central conflict. She moves to California eventually, comes back, leaves again. The series doesn’t give her a neat answer because there isn’t one.
This early book sets that up quietly. She loves her dad, she loves the sun, she loves her Connecticut life too. Martin doesn’t force a lesson. Dawn goes home without having figured it out. That was truer to life than I knew then.