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.