Counterfeit: A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times BESTSELLER - the most exciting and addictive heist novel you’ll read this summer!

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She finds out the secret to her success is that Winnie is running an illegal counterfeit exchange importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags. For each donated book I get through Ko-fi, I donate one of my current books to make room and continue paying it forward. If you are in the mood for something different and also in the mood for a book that will make you wonder if the purse you have is real or fake, you will enjoy this book. There’s a lot of talk regarding topics like immigration, racial profiling, and the strained trade relationship between the United States and China just to name a few things.

S. passport to help manage her business—someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava.

when you grow up as I did, schooled in the supremacy of “face”—the figurative face, the image, reputation, honor that must be fought for and preserved at all costs—breaking free from constraints to think for oneself becomes a Herculean task.

She keeps her friend company but is also there to assist with Ava’s son who forms quite an attachment to her.Ava and Winnie are compelling characters with strong motivations and the whole elaborate scheme is fascinating. As the story opens, it quickly becomes apparent that Ava is confessing her role in the scheme to a detective, while Winnie is somehow missing in action. The first part is written in Ava’s first person perspective, whereby she is narrating her experiences with Winnie and also her personal issues to the detective handling the case. Ava‘s portrayal is especially strong, she is not happy in her current life and plays it safe until she doesn’t. I always enjoy reading about the filthy rich and seeing the very different ways they live their lives and how that alters their mentality.

This isn't really a spoiler at all, after all, a book all about counterfeiting can't be exactly what it claims to be on the surface, can it? Regaling the detective with her story of being at Stanford and her fobby and irritating roommate Winnie, we follow the trajectory of her life and family background, Ava’s position as a hard-working, straight laced daughter of Chinese immigrants adjusts to the ruthless business of producing, exchanging, and selling counterfeit superfake designer bags. Ingeniously constructed, this cinematic novel of friendship, ambition, and wanting more out of life will leave you guessing until the end. As a matter of fact, I had to switch to the audiobook because I couldn’t stand any longer the lack of quotation marks. Her personality is such that she could convince anyone to do anything and she does just that by convincing Ava to join her counterfeiting scheme.Chen attacks the topics of racial bias, cultural differences, and the expectations that women face, especially regarding family vs. Chen’s third novel is sly and subversive, an examination of motherhood and an incisive look at culture and class .

Counterfeit has mentions of racism towards Asian Americans, nothing is explicit but I should mention it’s there. I really like the way it’s written with the saga unfolding as Ava tells the tale to Detective Georgia Murphy.

Sly and thoroughly compelling, Kirstin Chen's Counterfeit illuminates the world of fake designer handbags, as ruthless adventuress Winnie and her upstanding former college roommate Ava build an illicit business out of bravado and lies. Ava has money, a career, a husband, a child, but Ava has hit a wall after spending her whole life doing everything she is supposed to. I think disturbing true crime stories are having a pause in popularity and people are more engaged with scam artist tales told from an entertaining point of view. This one is so fast-paced and bingeable that it’s already been scooped up to be turned into a TV show.