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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the two female MCs were clever and strong. one of the female MCs is recounting the entire story to a detective so you know something goes wrong… but do they get away with it? what happens? how does it all go down? some people don’t like the “telling” vs “showing” trope of a book (think BLOOD SUGAR) but i didn’t mind it one bit. It is not quite what the marketing copy claims, not glitter and diamonds, it is much more rooted in realism and the everyday, even if Ava has a charmed (but miserable) life. 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. She's unhappy but can't admit it. It is no surprise that she can't avoid getting involved with her one-time college roommate Winnie when she suddenly reappears. Winnie left school in scandal and though Ava doesn't admit it, this is part of the attraction. Americans - People who are foolish enough to develop a fetish for these overpriced luxury products. A con artist story, a pop-feminist caper, a fashionable romp . . . Counterfeit is an entertaining, luxurious read—but beneath its glitz and flash, it is also a shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority. . . . Chen is up to something innovative and subversive here." — Camille Perri, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW In this crime drama, a risk-averse former lawyer joins an elaborate fakebag scheme to finally get some thrills.” — Cosmopolitan

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen - Book Club Chat Review: Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen - Book Club Chat

College roommates Ava Wong and Winnie Fang were never close—but now they are literally partners in crime, with a designer handbag scam as brazen as it is foolproof. Clever, catty fun.” — People , Best Books of Summer 2022 Counterfeit is as stylish and smart as its mastermind heroines. Kirstin Chen writes, with humor and verve, prose that’s as addictive as a luxury handbag habit, and psychologically rich characters, too. Come for the con, stay for the insights into identity and self discovery, and the ever-elusive American dream.” — Rachel Khong, award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin Chen has written a fast-paced, character-forward story of two very different Asian American women seemingly inadvertently falling into a collaboration to build a global counterfeit handbag empire . . . Ingeniously constructed, this cinematic novel of friendship, ambition, and wanting more out of life will leave you guessing until the end.” — Oprah Daily, 10 Must-Read Books for AAPI Heritage Month 2022 Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business—someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences. The topic the author is trying to discuss has already been discussed multiple times by other authors like Kevin Kwan. We have read this story many times, and it now seems boring to hear it again. But there are many other problems associated with this book that needs much more serious discussion.

In an interview on the podcast Editors Unedited, Chen said she came up with the idea for the novel while doing research for her second book, Bury What We Cannot Take, a historical novel. At first you may think you know Ava and you may think you know this book. But don't worry, the book is a few steps ahead of you and it is more than meets the eye. 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? The biggest problem with this book is excessive use of racial stereotypes. The way in which the author describes a few of the stereotypes seen in this novel are - This is a great easy read, it’s clever and fun but with dark undertones as it shines a light on things such as Chinese factory conditions. I really like the way it’s written with the saga unfolding as Ava tells the tale to Detective Georgia Murphy. The tone is so good you almost feel as if Ava is right in front of you.

Counterfeit Textbooks On Counterfeit Textbooks

The characterisation is really good with Ava and Winnie being chalk and cheese. Ava‘s portrayal is especially strong, she is not happy in her current life and plays it safe until she doesn’t. Winnie is smart, clever and duplicitously successful. If you closely observe racial stereotyping in literary works, we can see that most of them are written by people from the same ethnic group settled in places abroad like America, Europe, or even Singapore (in the case of PRC (Peoples Republic of China)). Example #2: Counterfeit item on the right has a different color tone and is narrower (a fake book cover):

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In this delicious romp about a counterfeit bag scheme, you’ll get “Hustlers” meets “The Bling Ring” meets “Molly’s Game.” . . . This one is so fast-paced and bingeable that it’s already been scooped up to be turned into a TV show.” — theSkimm, Buzzy Beach Reads of 2022 Chen’s third novel, published Tuesday by William Morrow, tells the story of Ava, a Chinese American lawyer who joins with an old college roommate in a long con involving counterfeit handbags. A critic for Kirkus called the book “a delightfully different caper novel with a Gone Girl–style plot twist.” While no one is physically hurt, it’s still a crime. And that’s something that Ava starts to wrestle with. Verdict It’s funny because going into the novel, I thought about how I’m not caught up in expensive purses anymore. I used to be all about getting a new Coach or a Kate Spade purse (at the outlets) but ever since the start of the pandemic, I’ve been fine carrying the same purse. But that said, I found myself looking at a Lululemon belt bag so maybe I do still care about name brands, haha.