At first the POV of this was truly annoying me, but the premise of the story left me intrigued. I trudged on and I’m glad I did, because the POV makes sense, but it takes a while to get there. Am I glad I kept reading? Yes!

More cohesive review to come but overall an easy and intriguing read.

Really enjoyed this novel about counterfeit handbags. Interesting look into that world. I recommend this book. Thanks NetGalley for the advanced copy. #NetGalley #Counterfeit

Counterfeit is stylish, soapy, and sharp. Chen pulls back the curtain on the knock-off designer handbag business and on the Chinese factories where they are mass produced.

This fashion-forward novel is a union of contemporary fiction and mystery. Chen employs a hybrid point of view, shifting from second person—Ava is talking to the detective—to Winnie's third-person account in the second part. She stays within the tight context of the relationship between the women and the reader is left trying to guess which story is real and which is the counterfeit?

With strong female characters, Counterfeit is full of glitz, hustle, friendship, and secrecy.

#counterfeit by Kristin Chen is a clever and fun women's fiction about the world of counterfeit designer bags. This book is full of secrets, lies, blackmail and deception. A must read for summer TBR list.🤓📚❤️

This was such a fun book! I thoroughly enjoyed the story, characters, and way the story unfolded. Most of the chapters are written as a first-person confessional interview with a police detective. The confessor is Ava Wong, a straight-laced, rule-abiding attorney married to a successful surgeon with an adorable young son. Ava's seemingly perfect life is anything but. Ava's world is thrown into further turmoil when Winnie Fang re-enters her life. The two met in college, but Winnie abruptly left due a mysterious scandal and returned home to Mainland China. When the two reconnect more than two decades later, Ava learns that Winnie has been running a lucrative counterfeiting scheme involving luxury handbags. Ava gets roped into the scheme but is eventually caught and tells her story to the detective. I hesitate to say more, as this surprising tale takes many fun twists and turns along the way. If you enjoy stories that have you rooting for the con and their capers, add this title to the top of your TBR pile today. You won't be disappointed by the wickedly ingenious tale!

Many thanks to HarperCollins/William Morrow and the Book Club Girl Early Reads program for the NetGalley copy!

I read this right after Cover Story and finished it in a couple days. It's so good! The characters and dialogue are well written, the story keeps you interested, its the perfect weekend read!

In Kirstin Chen's crime fiction novel "Counterfeit," two women make millions selling knockoff purses.

I highly recommend this read for fans of the genre. This novel would make a fabulous movie and was a speedy read in which I learned a lot more about designer handbags and manufacturing in China. This great cover certainly also deserves a shout out.

"Counterfeit" is an interesting read with a tightly wound plot and wonderful Asian and Asian-American representation. It's five stars from me!

This was a fascinating look into the world of fake handbags. Ava is the perfect Asian-American mom, lawyer, Stanford graduate, and doctors wife. Ava’s college roommate, Winnie, appears out of the blue after no contact since Winnie’s last day at school. Winnie appears to have finally met with success and Ava is dazzled by her wealth, beauty and confidence. Ava is soon sucked into a counterfeit handbag scam. The story is told to the reader as Ava recounts her involvement to the police but you soon learn there is more to her story. The characters are not very likable and i felt the storyline could have been better. Overall it was still a quick easy entertaining read.

3.5 stars! Interesting look at luxury counterfeiting and the scams surrounding them. I found this to be a quick, fun read that kept me guessing… how much of Ava’s story itself is Counterfeit!?

I heard about this one at HCC Frenzy's summer book preview event and thought it sounded really fun! It's about new(ish) mom Ava Wong, who is struggling with her child's emotional needs and being away from work indefinitely. When she runs into her old college roommate, Winnie Fang, she is surprised that the Stanford drop-out appears to be oozing money with her expensive handbags and accessories. She doesn't plan to re-kindle the friendship, but when she runs into a tight spot financially, Winnie recruits Ava to her counterfeit handbag scheme and soon Ava is in deeper than she ever wanted.

The most striking thing about this book for me was the storytelling style. The majority of the book is Ava recounting to a detective how she re-connected with Winnie and got caught up in her scheme. The detective doesn't have any dialogue and is a passive character, but the whole book is narrated to this detective, which makes for an interesting dilemma on what to think of our protagonist. Ava seems innocent enough, but given the context, it's hard to know how much we can trust her recount of what happened. We know the two women must have eventually been caught, but we're left to try and guess at how Ava gets involved and how the whole thing ultimately disintegrates.

It had a promising premise. I liked the writing style and I thought the author had great ideas, creatively she just didn't take it quite as far as I was hoping. There are a few twists and turns in the storytelling, but overall I was hoping for something more shocking and it didn't quite deliver. It's a fun story and scheme, but I found the main themes to be pretty surface level and I wanted more depth all around, from the plot, to the characters, to the overarching ideas. The synopsis talks about "interrogating the myth of the model minority", which I guess this book does to an extent, but I found the plot to dominate over everything else and while it was a fun story, it didn't have the depth to make it memorable.

This is fast paced thriller that keeps you wondering who exactly is telling the truth. From friendship to fashion, from legitimate business to scams, this book has it all. Enter the world of counterfiet luxury handbags, Chinese sweatshops, and marriage going south,and a terrible two toddler. Two women who were briefly room mates at college: one straight laced and the other daring. What a combination.
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Counterfeit by Kirsten Chen tells the story of Winnie and Ava who have a counterfeit ring with designer purses. What a clever presentation. I loved that Ava was telling her tale to the detective. A very different take!! It showed a side of Asian women and their culture. A creative plot! I will recommend. Thank you for allowing me to review this book.

I wanted to check out a book about counterfeiting luxury bags because I thought it sounded like a fun read. And it was. But it also wasn’t completely what I expected, which is a good thing.

***A bit of a spoiler if you’d prefer not to know details***
I thought the story structure to have Ava recount how Winnie lured her in and built their criminal empire to a detective was a clever approach. It also led me to trust her as a narrator. I just assumed her story. So when in part two we got Winnie’s side of the story, the revelations took be off guard.

A story that can so adeptly trick me always scores extra points from me!

Told in the form of a confession, Counterfeit takes off from the start with a quick paced story. The reader gets put into the role of the detective and must work out how much of what the narrator’s story is true. This unique narrative style puts a new spin on the crime caper and makes the reader an active participant in the story. While some characters’ actions and motives were never fully explained the story remained a light and easy read.

Thank you Book Club Girl and NetGallery for the eARC.

I am a big fan of Soy Sauce for Beginners, so was thrilled to see that Kristin Chen had a new book. Ava the perfect Asian American, the model minority . She is a new mom, attorney, Stanford graduate with a handsome physician husband. Isn't this is what Ava has worked for, but in every aspect, her life is a disappointment. How did things turn out this way? So, when the girl who was briefly Ava's college roommate, shows up with a counterfeit handbag scheme, Ava reluctantly or not so reluctantly gets sucked right in. Take two unreliable narrators and lots of twists and turns and you've got a very fast exciting read.

I know others were put off by the lack of quotation marks, but I think it went really well with the fact that most of the book is a monologue as Ava Wong is interrogated by a detective. I'm not going to lie... I figured out the big reveal pretty early on, but it was a fun read nonetheless and I would heartily recommend the book.

A few weeks ago, I attended an online event put on by @harpercollinsca for us book fanatics to hear more about what books are coming out this spring and summer. There were so many that sounded good, but Counterfeit right away caught my attention and I knew I wanted to read it.

I can’t believe how quickly I flew through this. For me it was a mash up of Finlay Donovan, Dial A for Aunties, and Lucky. But guess what… out of all of those books, I liked this one the best! So propulsive- I was pulled in instantly. The story begins with good girl Ava being questioned by a detective for her involvement in a counterfeit scheme. I didn’t know where the story was going to go, and there were some twists I wasn’t expecting. And the whole idea that high end luxury bags cost thousands of dollars and there’s a whole black market committed to creating dupes is so interesting to me.

I loved that part of the story took place in Hong Kong, where I used to live, and I could picture some of the scenes across the border in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. I personally always liked visiting markets and shopping the knock-off goods. Were they knock-offs, or were they “real” with slight defects, allowing them make their way to market vendors (when asked if his North Face jacket was real, my husband would always say “well it’s not imaginary!”). I loved that this book explored ethics around this global enterprise, but in a way that was fun and suspenseful. There is a lot to unpack!

I will say that I was enjoying the fast pace of the story, and felt it lost some momentum right at the end. There were some loose ends that seemed to be tied rather quickly, and parts of the story where I wanted more. But perhaps it was being left open for a sequel? Makes sense. I can see it.

This was a fantastic read! I can’t wait to see more reviews as it nears it’s pub day on June 7.

Thank you to @harpercollinsca and @harpercollinsca for the advanced copy.

4.5 stars!

Ava and Winnie are former college roommates, who meet up again later in life, and work together to run a counterfeit designer handbag scheme. Not all is as it seems from the very beginning, which is cleverly done but also to be expected with a book titled Counterfeit.

Neither woman is a truly likable character, but each has her own struggles and back story they use to justify the choices made that lead them to begin this scheme together. It's clear from the beginning that the law has caught up with them, and the book slowly reveals how things went awry, primarily from Ava's point of view.

This book was smartly plotted and kept me engaged and interested from the beginning. It's not truly a thriller or mystery, but more a character driven commentary on America and China and the differences in cultures and lifestyles.

Thank you to Book Club Girl and William Morrow and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.

Thank you for the advanced copy. 3.5 stars. It was pretty entertaining and I enjoyed reading about the lavish lifestyles and fashion. The lack of quotation marks during Ava’s narration was a little off putting at first, but it started to flow once I realized who she was talking to. Part 2 is a different voice and starts using a quotes, which was a surprise. I enjoyed it and it was a quick read, but overall forgettable.

Fast paced read that was hard to put down. This book is full of secrets, lies, mystery, and a few twists and turns that I did not see coming. Enjoyed the main characters of Ava and Winnie who team up to sell counterfeit high end hand bags. The author tells the story mostly from Ava’s perspective and through her confession of her crimes to a Detective that caught on to their scam. However, at times Winnie also gives her perspectives of the plot. Both characters make the story interesting as are leading very different with lives with Ava as an Asian American, well to do, rich, well educated, mother, housewife who is also quite unhappy with her career as a lawyer. Winnie is a foreigner from mainland China who seems to want to be an American at all costs. Both seem to be unreliable narrators which add to the drama and mystery of this story. The ending for me felt a bit unfulfilled and flat as it wrapped the book up in a too tidy fashion. But I really enjoyed this novel and found it a fun and exciting read. Thank you @harpercollins and @bookclubgirl for ACR!