“With her trademark charm and a pithy view of the world, G.A. Anderson invites us into the life of Katy Kiss, achieving a delicate balance of humor and hard reality as she struggles through a tumultuous divorce, the revelations of therapy and the heartbreak of loving imperfectly. South of Happily is raw, funny, scary, warmly reassuring, and profoundly moving. Fans of the smartly layered family dramas of Camille Pagan and Kerry Lonsdale will find a new favorite!”
Kimberly Brock, award winning author of The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare
Once in a while, an author comes along with a singular voice and makes every description and interaction on the page a pleasure to read. Anderson so completely captures the quirky, hilarious, and lovably flawed Katy Kiss that I'd know her if she passed me on the street. An amazing talent, and I hear a sequel is in the works, so get ready for more of this vibrant creation!
-George Weinstein, author of Hardscrabble Road & Return to Hardscrabble Road and many other books
Unlike most women's fiction, South of Happily goes beyond the usual themes of marriage, divorce, and family history. We get down to the heart of who is Katy Kiss, an astute young woman caught in the maelstrom of betrayal, grief and self-doubt. What is remarkable is how much humor, friendship and exotic travel keeps this story aloft, never mired in the cynicism and often surprisingly tender.
- Author Lizbeth Leigh Jones - Ulterior Motives
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G.A. Anderson
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Gaby (G.A) Anderson is a first-generation Canadian, born in Montreal, Quebec, to immigrants fleeing their country during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Gaby, her brother, her parents, and their trusted Hungarian Vizsla, moved to the United States in 1966, relocated to Paris for several years, and finally returned to the U.S. where she has lived ever since.
She is married, has two amazing daughters, and many (many) animals from the local shelters.
She began writing when friends and family on the receiving end of her emails told her she was “weird but funny”. The feedback compelled her to write. Her goals are to entertain, to put a smile on her reader's faces, and to push everyone about 27% past their comfort zone.
Gaby graduated from the University of Denver where she studied law, accounting, and business. She's worked in the restaurant industry, commercial and group travel, private aviation, and pharmaceutical instrumentation. She currently works in behavioral health management.
Her husband calls her a Renaissance Woman with mad-skills. This means she can catch a softball with one hand while holding a giant turkey leg with the other.
SOUTH OF HAPPILY
Two years into the marriage from hell, Katy Kiss is still South—still short of Happily. Her husband is pretty on the surface, but what lies beneath is quickly deteriorating.
She had a bad feeling while they were dating, and like a hundred times before, squashed her gut instinct under the weight of wanting to be a normal American girl instead of the weird daughter of Hungarian immigrants. But her plan to assimilate via Florida beach bum isn’t working and she’s about to learn that getting into a lousy marriage was the easy part. Getting out…not so much.
Taking her lawyer’s “gentle” advice, Katy begins therapy where she scores zero for effort, eight for avoidance, and ten out of ten for having the attention span of a gerbil. But her world is unraveling, and she’s forced to explore the dreaded topics her European family shuns. Their history and emotion. Any emotion.
As the stress of her separation builds, Katy gets a late night call that puts her life on hold and sends her scrambling to the far ends of the earth. Something unimaginable is happening, and it’s going to throw open the floodgates to all those repressed emotions—and to the secrets locked inside the Kiss Family closet.
Katy will need her passport and her closest friends to see her through the calamities, both domestic and international. If candor and snark can save her from herself, she might discover the truth hiding between the lies and find the Happily she’s been searching for.
5.0 out of 5 stars Two-Day Read
Reviewed in the United States
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book was a two-day read, because I didn't want to finish it in one. I wanted to drag out the adventures of Katy and her tribe, laughing out loud most of the time and crying a bit, too.
I didn't want it to end, because Katy is a compilation of so many best friends that I've had over the years, and I wanted to hold her close and cherish our time together.