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Matsunaga Masahiro thinks he'll be satisfied by one night with sexy Takekawa Takane. However, having once sampled Takane's charms, Masahiro is dismayed to learn he's just one of five sex friends. Masahiro is downright appalled when Takane gets out of bed to go have sex with another man. It's so rude, but it also shows Masahiro that Takane's heart has never been involved in his sexual encounters. He resolves to make Takane choose monogamy, but Takane's other lovers aren't happy about being cut off.

Masahiro is charmingly goofy, like some kind of gung-ho shounen hero confident in his prowess crossed with a shoujo heroine relying on the power of love. Takane is kind of a selfish diva, frankly, and he challenges Masahiro to prove that monogamy won't bore him. Masahiro responds with a devastating combo of mind-blowing sex, post-coital cuddling, emotional support, and impeccable timing.

Hirokawa manages to have her cake and eat it too by having Masahiro demand monogamy, but then allow Takane to have one last fling with two of his soon-to-be-ex sex friends. One experience shows Takane how much more he enjoys sex with Masahiro. The other rival manages to beat Masahiro in the sexual arena, but Takane realizes the strange feeling in his chest is love, and he tells Tadanori it's over, even if he is better in bed.

A short story rounds out the volume. Shy Nanao has fallen in love with a freelancer who works for the same design company, but his high school boyfriend broke his heart. If Kensho can cope with the fact he's fallen in love with a guy, he still has to convince Nanao to take a chance on love. After more plot than the rest of the book put together, the story ends with a sweet kiss.

Hirokawa's characters are handsome, with huge feet and hands. You'll never know if the corollary is actually true, because the love scenes are typically coy about showing boy parts. Masahiro and Takane are very flexible and enthusiastic though. Takane, with his tousled locks, pointy nose and starry eyes, often has the look of 70s shoujo, but Masahiro's design is more modern.

The Dawn of Love is enjoyable fluff, all hot sex and silliness with little to mar the cheerful mood but a thwarted knife attack from a jealous lover. Hirokawa tosses in cute details like Masahiro needing to work extra hours to afford all the love hotel rent, consulting the Shijuhatte, a sex manual, to find new sexual positions, and commiserating with friends from law school. The plot is a little disjointed and Masahiro's reason for loving Takane isn't terribly convincing: he's a flower that needs to be nurtured because he gives his pollen away to too many men.

I suspect that in the original dialogue, suki and ai were used to differentiate between how Takane feels about Masahiro in the beginning (“I love your face...and your voice...I love you down there, too.”) and how he feels by the end (“I love you, Tadanori...but I love Masahiro.”). They can both be translated as love, but ai is a much more romantic, deeper feeling, and it would have been nice if the translator had found a way to preserve the distinction, since it's an important part of Takane learning to connect his heart and his body.