<\/p>\n
Spunky Megan McKnight is a twenty-year-old soccer player at Southern Methodist University with dreams of making the Olympic team. The Bluebonnet Club Debutante Season is the very last thing on her mind. Then a story (\u201can announcement for a virgin auction\u201d) appears in the local paper, declaring that Megan and her twin sister, Julia, are debuting this season, complete with photographs (Megan thinks she looks \u201clike a hick who\u2019d lucked into a makeover coupon\u201d), and Megan realizes that her mother has pulled a fast one.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Megan confronts her mother (\u201cClearly decades of coloring your hair and chugging SlimFast have taken a toll\u201d), she learns that there is more to her mother\u2019s madness than she knows, and she agrees to debut as a favor to her father.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Season<\/em><\/strong><\/span>,<\/span><\/a> the first novel from screenwriters Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer<\/strong><\/a>, is a romantic comedy, a modern YA riff on Jane Austen that is my pick, so far, for best beach read this summer. In fact, I didn\u2019t want to put it down and read it in one sitting. The Season<\/em> is fun, easy reading, but it\u2019s not all sweetness and light. The plot is carefully crafted and weaves together several well-developed subplots, including violence against women, financial disaster, and environmental catastrophe.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Megan\u2019s first-person narrative is breezy and irreverent. When she rips her dress riding a bicycle to debutante orientation, she uses the receptionist\u2019s stapler to close the gap. She frets that her cleavage has been \u201cstunted\u201d by years of sports bras. Megan attends the first party sporting a black eye, courtesy of an opposing goalie, and there meets Hank and Andrew. Is Hank as good as he seems? Is Andrew the total jerk he appears to be?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Dyers\u2019s descriptions are frequently hilarious, and I often laughed aloud: Megan claims not to be debutante material, citing \u201cfaded Wranglers \u2026 Hanes sports bras \u2026 a farmer\u2019s tan \u2026 [and] muscular legs [that are] a war zone.\u201d The Dyers are also capable of the surprisingly evocative, describing Julia as \u201cdelicate as a Japanese sliding door.\u201d The parties (\u201cevents were lined up on the horizon like planes on approach to DFW airport\u201d) are over-the-top and fascinating in an anthropological sort of way; themes include Arabian Nights, Venetian Masquerade, and Denim to Diamonds.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Toward the end, The Season<\/em> occasionally dips a toe into treacle, and no one should ever say \u201ccowboy up.\u201d But these are small flaws and forgivable because the ride is so much fun and the conclusion classically satisfying. Megan learns that her soccer coach and the director of the Bluebonnet Club Debutante Season are not so different, and neither are the lessons they teach and the skills required to excel in both arenas.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Debutante season is about much more than parties, elbow-length gloves, deportment class, and curtsies (\u201cThe Texas Dip\u201d). It\u2019s about becoming an adult, supporting others, responsibility, and \u201cleaving a legacy.\u201d Like Megan herself, The Season<\/em> is exactly what you expect\u2014and so much more.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Review of the first novel from the screenplay team of Jonah Lisa and Stephen Dyer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[241,12,8,18,111,76],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-humor","tag-lonestarreview","tag-lonestarliterarycom","tag-romance","tag-texasbook","tag-yafiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}