I enjoyed the story but had a hard time getting into it. While I appreciated the plot and how it wrapped a lot, I just had a hard time with the pace.

More of a howdunit than a whodunit as two women push a high-end knock-off purse scheme. I was absolutely caught up in the story, though I found some of the framing of one of the women supposedly telling her story to a detective to be distracting at best and wildly off the mark at worst. Still, a fun and easy read that kept me in it from start to finish, once I decided to ignore that bit of distraction.

This book was a fun, intriguing, and quick read. While it’s another scam story, the author did a good job of leaving the reader wondering what the main characters intentions are and who’s side you should be on.

I'll preface this by saying I am not a purse person. I barely carry a wristlet wallet. However, Chen has a way of pulling the reader into a life that's far beyond my means or imagination and the ride is enjoyable. Motherhood discontent! There should be more novels with that as the motivation for bad decision making.

Apologies to anyone desperate to read my now rather belated thoughts on this title, but I'm leaving placeholders in lieu of NetGalley reviews for any HarperCollins titles I didn't get around to reviewing before now until the HarperCollins Union gets a contract! As a reader who loves the books HarperCollins publishes, I stand with the workers who produce those books.

*Yes, I know this book came out in June and it's now December, and that the likelihood HarperCollins management is even reading this is vanishingly small, but it's difficult to escape into reading a book when I know that the real people who produced it are struggling to earn a living wage, and small actions like this seem like the least I can do.

It was an interesting read although I never quite connected with Ava or Winnie. The view of the counterfeit luxury hand bag industry was interesting but the book didn’t really do it for me.

I tore through this book. I read it in less than 24 hours. Such a fun read! Highly recommended! Thanks for the ARC!

This book was okay for me. I was invested enough to finish it, but I felt it ended weak and put it down a lot. Good ideas but not executed well.

Counterfeit was an interesting story exploring China's lucrative counterfeit bag industry, told via a police interview with the main character Ava. Don’t go into it expecting to like anyone and you’ll really enjoy this one. The first half of the book was by far better than the second and the writing style was definitely different, with no quotation marks for dialogue. I learned a lot about the industry and definitely have memories of walking through the night markets in Hong Kong and even NYC where people would openly sell counterfeit bags.

Overall an enjoyable contemporary read that I read in two sittings on the boat.

This is my first Kristin Chen novel and look forward to reading some of her other titles. Thank you for creating characters that this Asian girl can relate to in terms of family and expectations.

This wasn't exactly what we were expecting, but we still loved the characters and the unique plot lines. It was a bit slow and maybe needed a little fine-tuned editing, but all-in-all, we would recommend this!

For fans of whatever that Anna Delvey thing is on Netflix this is a hustler story with heart… Or at least most of it is. I found the later part of the story more interesting and if you’ve read it you know what I mean but honestly this book was fun easy to read and like very well written I loved it

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Unpopular opinion - I just didn't think that this book was written very well. The characters weren't unique enough to always tell who was speaking, and this was compounded by the fact that the author didn't use quotation marks throughout the book.

The story itself had a lot of potential, I just felt it really fell short.

What a FUN read! Life had gotten very busy, so I got behind in reading my ARCs. This would’ve been perfect for summer! I loved the twist at Part 2. Very clever!

Once a successful lawyer, Ava Wong is now a stay at home mom controlled by her toddler’s epic temper tantrums. Layer her feelings of failure as a mother with a rocky marriage and Ava is floundering to regain control of her life. She is close to rock bottom when her old college roommate, Winnie Fang, re enters her life and presents Ava with a side hustle dealing in counterfeit luxury handbags. While the logistics of handbag design may not enthrall every reader, the drama of Ava’s desperation is tangible through the novel and one can easily see why this was a Reece’s Book Club selection.

This book is a diabolical intriguing story about two college friends who reunite years after and run the most diabolical scheme in America to ever go coastal and it works!!!!!!!! This book kept me up reading long into the night. I was sucked in from the first page until it spit me back out awed at what I had just read.

Two Asian American woman both with good means and careers hit on bad luck. They run into the obstacles of everyday living. However, due to their lives they are thrown for a loss. To have their material wants taken care of they go into counterfeiting of designer merchandise, i.e., purses, clothes and the like. It is an interesting idea!! I found the book to be very long-winded in places and not interesting in the under 300 pages.

This book was fast-paced with plenty of twists that'll keep you guessing! The lack of quotation marks was the only thing I disliked about this book. Overall good writing and an interesting plot!

The twisting perspectives on this one were so fun! Can't wait to see more from this author. Kept me guessing until the end.

Counterfeit is written and told in a very fascinating way. We are hearing the story from the perspective of a woman being interrogated by a detective about her involvement in a crime. So inherently, this story is told by an unreliable narrator, or at least you think so. It is interesting how you try to figure out whether this woman is telling the truth or is obsfucating the facts.

I found this to be one of the most compelling parts of the book. Otherwise, I was not as interested in the book. I didn't feel anything towards any of the characters and I really wanted more of the emotions from our main character about the whole endeavour.

Overall, it was an alright book. I just expected more introspection.