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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
In the coastal town of Dufferin Beach, Katy Kiss is searching for the hope she had as a child, when her immigrant grandmother pinched her cheeks and promised a lifetime of “Happily”.
At twenty-six, that Happily is nowhere to be found. Katy is stuck working in her family’s Hungarian restaurant, and her marriage feels like it’s been churned through the business end of a meat grinder. All that remains is a pile of matrimonial dysfunction.
Taking her best friend’s advice, Katy tries therapy where she scores zero for effort, eight for avoidance, and ten out of ten for having the attention span of a small rodent. But she’s about to get a divorce, her life is unraveling, and she’s forced to explore the one topic her family won’t go near. Emotion.
As the stress of her situation builds, Katy longs for the support of her parents, but her dad is misbehaving in a foreign country, and her indignant mother is holed up in Paris. All they’ve left behind is a mysterious document she wasn’t meant to find.
When a late-night call wakes her from a haunting dream, the secrets about that document begin coming out. She’ll need her passport, her closest friends, and her annoying therapist to see her through the calamities, both domestic and international.
If candor and snark can save her from herself, Katy might discover the truth hiding between the lies, and find the Happily she’s been searching for.