Heather Gay knows how a lot of people are going to read her new book.
Some will leaf through the “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” cast member’s second book, “Good Time Girl” — to be released Tuesday by Gallery Books, the imprint that published her 2023 best-selling memoir “Bad Mormon” — and skip to the last chapter, she said.
That chapter — titled “Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots!” (after her meme-worthy line from the show’s season 4 finale) — details when Gay confronted rookie cast member Monica Garcia with evidence that she was running social media accounts under the name Reality Von Tease, which trolled the other Housewives with gossip.
“I’m OK with that,” Gay said in a recent interview, “because I’ve got books for that exact reason.”
That standoff with Garcia, Gay said, “has been a defining moment in my life.”
“The last year changed a lot of things, for my friendships, for my position on the show — just for the fame and the notoriety of it,” she said.
(Meredith Andrews | Bravo) Heather Gay, left, and Monica Garcia on the fateful trip to Bermuda at the end of season 4 of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
There’s more to “Good Time Girl,” though, than Gay’s musings about life as a reality-TV star. As with “Bad Mormon,” Gay explores her whole life — growing up a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, getting married and quickly realizing he wasn’t right for her, dating after divorce and coming into her own both as a businesswoman (founder of Beauty Lab + Laser) and a familiar face on America’s TV screens.
Gay’s reason for writing a second book was simple. “I just had more to say,” she said.
“All the ways the ‘Housewives’ changed my life in the last few years,” Gay said, “it felt like I was unpacking more and wanted to write about it. And writing ‘Bad Mormon’ was such an incredible experience for me, and it had been received so well that it just felt natural for me to write more.”
The title “Good Time Girl” comes from a nickname foisted on Gay by castmate Lisa Barlow early in the series. Barlow remembered, incorrectly, some story about Gay exposing her breasts while she was a student at Brigham Young University — a violation of both the school’s Honor Code and her strict Latter-day Saint upbringing. (The story inspired the book cover art, in which Gay poses lifting up her tank top; her bared breasts are strategically covered by the book’s title.)
“The perception of that nickname was it was shameful and painful, because there was a part of me that desperately wanted to be a ‘good time’ girl — and I was never in an environment that nurtured that,” Gay said.
(Gallery Books) Heather Gay, one of the "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City," on the cover of her second book, "Good Time Girl," slated to be released Dec. 3, 2024.
Gay said she was raised to believe that “if you’re wild now, you will not get anything in life that you want. You’ve got to clamp it down at 18, or every choice you make thereafter will have severe consequences.”
In the new book, Gay discusses times when her “good time” girl got loose. In one story, she recounts when she was a senior in high school, and she and her friends traveled unchaperoned to Newport Beach, California, with an unplanned side trip to Tijuana — where she encountered tequila, dispensed by a sexy bartender named Guillermo.
Looking back at her life, Gay said, “that ‘good time’ girl kept me going, and probably got me where I am today.”
Gay’s daughters are in college and, she said, “based on their private Snapchat stories, they are quite indeed ‘good time’ girls. They are living the life, but they don’t have that same shadow of shame.”
Finishing the book with the chapter on Monica Garcia, Gay said, “felt like a give-back to the fans who watch the show. Everybody loves behind-the-scenes; I love behind-the-scenes.”
In that chapter, Gay exhaustively recounts how Garcia ingratiated herself with “Real Housewives” co-star Jen Shah, and arranged to post incriminating information about Shah as she was facing federal fraud charges.
Gay also details how Garcia changed her image so she could audition to replace Shah on the show — a plan that worked until people tipped Gay to Garcia’s online alter ego.
On the day before they filmed their confrontation in Bermuda, Gay said she spent the day sifting through information about Garcia. “I had just been fed this stream, this fire hose of information,” she said.
“We live in an online world. In Reality Von Tease’s situation, she had been documented in season 2 and season 3,” Gay said. “Everything that she had said and done had been said online, so it was very accessible.”
“As remarkable as it was to watch, it was crazy for us to live it,” she continued.
With “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” more than halfway through its fifth season, and her second book on sale this week, Gay said she’s fascinated by the reactions — positive and negative — that her fame has brought out in people.
(Joshua Applegate | Bravo) Heather Gay, left, and Meredith Marks at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, in a scene from a season 5 episode of "The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City."
“The conservative side of my family and friends, they don’t speak of it. They don’t acknowledge it, and it’s just this unspoken giant bad Mormon in the room,” she said. “For the people that kind of always knew I was a ‘good time’ girl, they have come out of the woodwork and celebrated me.”
Gay cited one of the people she writes about in the book: Martha Bourne, whom Gay met in the 1990s, getting her first job out of high school as an assistant tech writer. Bourne worked at the same company, and also played in a popular Salt Lake City band at the time, My Sister Jane. Martha also was, as Gay tells it, the first lesbian she had ever known personally. (Bourne now is a professor at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, and a composer of film music.)
“People like Martha, they’re kind of amused by my success,” Gay said. “But they also are kind of predictive, like, ‘We always knew you had it in you.’”
Heather Gay will appear for a pre-release event, Monday at Milk+, 49 E. 900 South, Salt Lake City. Doors open at 5 p.m.; a live Q&A starts at 6 p.m., and the meet-and-greet signing line runs from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The event is organized by The King’s English Bookshop. Tickets (which include a copy of “Good Time Girl”) are $35 and $45, available at kingsenglish.com. Those attending must be 21 or older.
