Jonah Lisa Dyer

I was attracted to this book both for the cover and the promise of it being a "modern take on Pride and Prejudice". Turns out, the Texas Bluebonnet debutante season is a great modern vehicle for telling that classic tale, with the McKnight family, who are longtime cattle ranchers and therefore not of newer oil money, filling in for the economically challenged Bennetts. Twins Megan and Julia are signed up together for the Season, after a long line of family members including their mother took advantage of the debutante experience. While Julia is more suited to the event, Megan, who the book is really about, is a soccer star at SMU, hoping to make it to the under-23's to gain some national recognition. You can see the roles clearly, but even I was a bit curious about Hank's motives in helping the McKnight family and how the handsome but reticent Andrew was going to become our hero. Megan really steps up to the plate. She evolves through the story into a fine young woman who finds she can care about many things, including her family's livelihood, soccer and the Texas Dip.… (lisätietoja)

The Season (3 stars)
"The Season" started extremely well. It was light and funny, and I was enjoying soccer-loving Megan's foray into the world of debutants. However, about halfway through the mood became far more serious as Megan's family struggled to keep their ranch and that's when the book lost its appeal for me. I still enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as the first half.

I was confused about the recommended audience for this book. "The Season" is listed as YA but Megan was twenty, although she acted quite younger most of the time, yet her mother 'forced' her to make her debut. Also, there were a number of adult scenes which weren't really appropriate for a young teen. Another thing that annoyed me was the lack of interaction between Megan and Andrew. It was only in the last few chapters that they actually had a conversation with each other.

So, overall, a strong beginning, but then the plot faded into mediocracy.… (lisätietoja)

YA FICTION
Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer
The Season
Viking
Hardcover, 978-0-451-47634-0 (also available as an ebook, audio book, and on Audible), 352 pgs., $17.99
July 12, 2016

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 (“an announcement for a virgin auction”) appears in the local paper declaring that Megan and her twin sister Julia are debuting this season, complete with photographs (Megan thinks she looks “like a hick who’d lucked into a makeover coupon”), and Megan realizes that her mother has pulled a fast one.

When Megan confronts her mother (“Clearly decades of coloring your hair and chugging SlimFast have taken a toll”), she learns that there is more to her mother’s madness than she knows and she agrees to debut as a favor to her father.

The Season, the first novel from screenwriters Jonah Lisa Dyer and Stephen Dyer, 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’t want to put it down and read it in one sitting. The Season is fun, easy reading but it’s 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.

Megan’s first-person narrative is breezy and irreverent. When she rips her dress riding a bicycle to debutante orientation, she uses the receptionist’s stapler to close the gap. She frets that her cleavage has been “stunted” 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?

The Dyers’s descriptions are frequently hilarious, and I often laughed aloud: Megan claims not to be debutante material, citing “faded Wranglers…Hanes sports bras…a farmer’s tan…[and] muscular legs [that are] a war zone.” The Dyers are also capable of the surprisingly evocative, describing Julia as “delicate as a Japanese sliding door.” The parties (“events were lined up on the horizon like planes on approach to DFW airport”) are over-the-top and fascinating in an anthropological sort of way; themes include Arabian Nights, Venetian Masquerade, and Denim to Diamonds.

Toward the end, The Season occasionally dips a toe into treacle, and no one should ever say “cowboy up.” 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.

Debutante season is about much more than parties, elbow-length gloves, deportment class, and curtsies (“The Texas Dip”). It’s about becoming an adult, supporting others, responsibility, and “leaving a legacy.” Like Megan herself, The Season is exactly what you expect — and so much more.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.… (lisätietoja)