Author: Kirstin Chen
Genre: Crime Caper / Social Thriller / Feminist Friendship Saga
Ideal For: Readers who love a glamorous heist with hidden gravitas—perfect for fans of Hustlers, The Blings Ring, The Girls. If you’re looking for a story that sparkles in designer leather but stings with cultural urgency, this is the book you’ll stay up late for.
Plot Summary (Spoiler-Free)
From the very first chapter of Counterfeit, Kirstin Chen throws you into the world of Ava Wong—a polished, rule-abiding Chinese-American lawyer whose “perfect” life (Stanford, high-powered husband, toddler in tow) is unraveling. Then enters Winnie Fang—the enigmatic former college roommate who resurfaces with designer bags dripping in luxury and a proposal: help me build a counterfeit handbag empire. What starts as a favour morphs into a global scam, a moral labyrinth, and a fracture in identity. The novel deftly turns the appealing world of high-fashion and knock-offs into something revealing: the fakes aren’t just the bags—they’re the lives, the promises, the American dream spun out of reach.
Chen’s Style: Slick, Sharp, Subversive
Chen writes with the glint of a luxury buckle and the weight of a factory stitch. The prose is fast-moving, the tension mounting: what begins as fashion-fluff flips into elder truths about race, ambition, motherhood, identity. One reviewer called the novel “a con-artist story, a pop-feminist caper, a fashionable romp … but beneath its glitz and flash, it is also a shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority.”
The structure—a confession-style narration—pulls you in: Ava’s voice confesses to a detective, the truth twists, you question what’s real. Reviewers praised how the narrative keeps you so unsure of whom to trust.
Themes That Stick Under Your Skin
- Ambition vs. Authenticity. Ava’s immaculate life cracks. Winnie’s sparkle seduces. The novel asks: what is authenticity when your success is built on someone’s untreated sweat or someone else’s denied identity?
- Identity and the Model Minority. The novel doesn’t hide how Asian-American women are boxed in—and how they box themselves in. Chen takes aim at those expectations and peels back the pressure.
- Friendship as Power—and Liability. Ava and Winnie’s relationship is thrilling and toxic: loyalty, admiration, manipulation. The question isn’t just What will they do? but What will they become?
- Luxury, Labour, and the Global Divide. The counterfeit bags aren’t just flashy—they’re manufactured in China, sold in the U.S., consumed as status. Chen explores the cost we rarely see.
What’s Real? If the bag is fake, is the success fake? If the lawyer is “safe,” is she still alive? The novel lingers on what is fake—and what is genuine beneath the surface.
What Works Brilliantly
- Hooked from page one. The moment Ava reconnects with Winnie, you know the façade is about to shatter—and you can’t look away.
- Characters with depth and cunning. Ava could’ve been cliché. She isn’t. Winnie could’ve been a stereotype. She isn’t. Both are layered, surprising, complicated.
- Plot with pace and surprise. There’s a twist that many readers say changes everything about what you believed. Chen pulls chapters so you keep flipping.
- Cultural commentary wrapped in entertainment. You get the thrill of the con, plus the sting of inequality, race, consumerism. The blend feels rich, not heavy.
- Stylish setting. The handbags, the boutiques, the factories, the San Francisco-Guangzhou-global circuit—it all gives the story a vivid playground for consequences.
A Small Note (That Folds Into the Story)
If you prefer a completely black-and-white villain, you might wrestle with how ambiguous this book lets its characters (and readers) be. Some readers noted the narration can get so rooted in the confessional voice that the lack of quotation marks feels strange at first.
But if you allow the unreliability, the tension only grows stronger.
Why You’ll Remember This One
After finishing Counterfeit, you’ll look at a luxury handbag and wonder what you’re really paying for. You’ll recall Ava’s glossy façade cracking, Winnie’s flash disappearing, the sting of being on the wrong side of the hustle. You’ll ask yourself: What in my life is fake, and what am I willing to risk to make it real? The book stays with you—not just for the twist, but for how it unsettles the world you thought you knew.
Counterfeit combines caper-cool with cultural urgency, gives you thrills and reflection, features characters you root for and distrust, and wraps it all in a narrative so sharp you’ll feel the cut. Kirstin Chen has delivered a novel that is fun, fierce, fashionable—and deeply meaningful. If you’re ready for a book that glitters and reveals, pick this one up. You won’t want to wait.
