Who knew life would be this hard?
California Diaries is a Darker and Edgier Spin-Off series of The Babysitters Club, consisting of 15 books which rolled out between 1997 and 1999.The series is anchored by former BSC member Dawn Schaffer soon after she moves back to California and expands the universe to include her friends—some of whom we've met before (Sunny Winslow and Maggie Blume) and others who are new (Amalia Vargas and Christopher "Ducky" McRae), with the Framing Device that the private school asks the students to keep diaries through the year; each character narrates three books each, all told in first person journals.
Although the series shared its ghost-writers with the original BSC series (Peter Lerangis, Jeanne Betancourt and Nola Thacker all penned novels), it's much more mature in scope overall compared to the original series, dealing with themes such as depression and suicide, eating disorders, abusive relationships, alcoholism, and cancer. The books also tend to contain plots that don't (or rarely) resolve smoothly; at the end; for example, Sunny and Dawn's fight is partially resolved in one book but things are clearly still tense with them for some time after.
The main conflict of the series arises when the eighth grade is merged with the high school; Dawn, Sunny, Maggie and Jill (who quickly breaks off from the group) go from being the oldest in their school to the youngest. One of the other major events driving the plot is the plight with Sunny's mom, Betsy, who was introduced as having lung cancer in the original series.
This series contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Maggie Blume's mother is more neglectful than abusive, but her father is very needy and has such high expectations of her (and such disregard for his daughter's clear suffering) that he borders on emotionally abusive.
- Adults Are Useless: The Blumes and the McRaes are good examples of this – while most of the characters end up solving their problems on their own without help from their parents, Sunny's dad has an excuse (his wife is dying) and Dawn and Amalia show that they do talk to their parents and get a fair amount of advice from them. The McRaes, however, are usually off on research trips and seem to think Ducky can solve his own problems and that his brother can fill the gap (he can't) and the Blumes are too wrapped up in their lifestyles to notice Maggie's obvious pain.
- Aesop Amnesia: Played realistically. The latter half of the series focuses on Sunny learning that she needs to open up to her friends more. It takes her a while to learn that, but not because she's forgotten her lesson already – because letting people in is hard after you've been through trauma.
- Ambiguously Gay: Ducky has drifted apart from his longtime friends because they're all meathead jocks. His new best friends are all teenage girls, but they're platonic (he is somewhat self-conscious of that). He recoils at the idea that Sunny is attracted to him. His last scene (the very last one in the series, as he narrates the last book) has him buying a ton of books from a bunch of authors who happen to be gay. Some fans have speculated that Ducky's sexuality was going to be explored in the series, but it was toned down to make things more acceptable in the late 90s.
- Amicably Divorced: Dawn's parents continue to be a straight example, although we don't see them interact much.
- Ascended Extra: Sunny and Maggie go from being mentioned a few times in the main BSC series to being lead characters who narrate three of their own books. Similarly, Ducky and Amalia don't get much play in the first book and are merely introduced as upperclassmen and mutual friends of others, but later join the central cast.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Dawn is pretty passive, but becomes fully vicious to Sunny when she feels she's neglecting her family.
- Blended Family Drama: Downplayed. Dawn is not a big fan of Carol, her new stepmother, although she's not antagonistic. She also isn't too thrilled that Carol's having a baby, but of course loves Gracie when she arrives.
- Blessed with Suck: Maggie Blume is rich, talented, beautiful and gifted, but is completely miserable and is terrified of being imperfect.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Both Sunny and Dawn show shades of this to their parents. Coincidentally, both of them seem to enjoy the company of the other's parents much more than their own.
- Characterization Marches On:
- Downplayed—because it's from one series to another—but the Dawn we meet in The Baby-Sitters Club is always described as laid-back, cool and not dramatic at all. Back in California, she's actually the most uptight of all the characters, refuseing to let anyone deal with things their own way and is always falling apart in some way or another.
- The same goes for Jill, who was initially established as serious and thoughtful much like Mary Anne. In the first book, she's portrayed as very childish, to the point where Dawn, Maggie and Sunny drift away from her.
- Cool Big Sis: Amalia's sister, Isabel (even though Amalia is occasionally jealous or feels like The Unfavorite in comparison).
- Darker and Edgier: The series is this compared to the original BSC. However, the use of this trope surprisingly didn't come off as cheesy or overdone. It allowed for more character development and exploration of realistic adolescent themes, like depression, drifting away from childhood friends, and (arguably) closeted homosexuality.
- Drunk Driver: Ducky almost becomes this after being talked into drinking too much at the Jax concert. Dawn calls her father, though.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Although there's some debate as to whether or not the girls featured on the (often unclear) book covers are actually meant to be the girls, Dawn is still depicted as a beautiful blonde surfer girl. Sunny and Maggie are mentioned to be canonically blonde, although the girls we see on their covers appear to have darker hair.
- Everytown, America: Palo City is a fictional suburb of Anaheim (which is already a suburb of LA) and checks off every Californian stereotype in the book.
- Extracurricular Enthusiast: Maggie is this, although she does so more to make her parents happy.
- Five-Token Band: We have the good-natured leader, the emotionally troubled rebel, the talented musician with rich and famous but neglectful parents, the Latina girl, and the token boy.
- Frozen in Time: It's mostly averted, which is a miracle considering the series it's spun off from, but the book timeline does seem to hop around, especially when it comes to summer and the end of school.
- Informed Ability: Maggie is supposed to be an amazing songwriter, but the songs she writes in her diaries are really no more than "good for an eighth grader."
- Jerkass Ball: Dawn and Sunny hurl it back and forth between one another, although with Sunny it's a bit more understandable because of what she's going through with her mother.
- Missing Mom:
- Sunny officially loses her mom Betsy to cancer in the twelfth book.
- Ducky's parents are professors who are almost always gone on research trips; at the time of the series they're in Ghana and barely communicate with their sons.
- Most Writers Are Adults: Not played up nearly as much as the original BSC, but the girls still do appear much more level-headed, mature and cool than regular thirteen-year-olds. In particular, Sunny has a surprising amount of independence (partially justified due to her mother's illness and father's subsequent distraction, and having a job at a bookstore owned by her father makes sense). Maggie also seems to look and act more like an adult than a kid, and the way she (and especially Amalia) take the band Vanish so seriously, you'd think they were an actual touring professional band and not a local high school band.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Averted, in part because of the original series. In an interview with Ann M. Martin in 2014
, she explained that when she started writing the BSC books, she had initially written the original series as a short four book run, but as it took off and became wildly popular she ended up having to freeze the character ages after they started eighth grade—meaning that the characters were not allowed to grow very much emotionally or through other stages of adolescence. California Diaries allowed for more mature stories with the characters in California. - Parental Substitute: Carol, Dawn's stepmom, becomes this to Sunny as she is avoiding her depressing home. Inversely, Betsy Winslow becomes this to Dawn as she looks to distance herself from her pregnant stepmom.
- Practically Different Generations: Dawn's father and stepmother Carol have a new baby, who is fourteen years younger than Dawn and eleven years younger than Jeff.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Played with in books six and seven. They essentially cover the exact same timeframe and events, but one from Sunny's perspective and one from Dawn's perspective. It's easy to side with either of them depending on whose book you're reading.
- Spinoff: Is a more mature spinoff from The Baby-Sitters Club.
- Token Minority: Amalia is the only central character of colour, and she and her parents are the only Latinx characters in the series.
- True Companions: The whole group is this, especially Sunny and Dawn. For all they go through, they'll always be there for each other.
- Wham Episode: Even though everyone knew it was coming, the book in which Sunny's mom dies still packs a punch.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Sometimes justified in the case of Sunny (enduring her mother's illness at a young age) and Maggie (growing up with a famous father), but for the most part the girls seem a bit too mature for their age.
