
June '22 Pick
Counterfeit
Kirstin Chen
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake. Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a...
Counterfeit
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake. Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home—she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point. 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. Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.
From Our Book Lover-In-Chief
“This is the page turner to kick off your summer!"
This month’s book pick, Counterfeit by @kirstin.chen, is like having a friend tell you the juiciest story. It follows Ava, a lawyer on maternity leave, who gets pulled into a fake handbag scheme by one of her best friends. As Ava and her friend Winnie build this business, Ava starts to ask—what do I really want, not what does everyone else want me to want. It’s non-stop, and every minute I was like “Oh my gosh, are they going to get caught?!” Pick up this perfect summer read and join us in conversation all month long at @ReesesBookClub.


FROM THE AUTHOR
Kirstin Chen
Kristin Chen is the award-winning, best-selling author of three novels. Her latest, Counterfeit, is forthcoming from William Morrow/HarperCollins (US) and The Borough Press (UK) in June 2022. Film and TV rights have been optioned by Sony Pictures. Her second novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, was named a best book of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle. It was also shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. Her debut novel, Soy Sauce for Beginners, was an Amazon bestseller and an Oprah Magazine editors’ pick. She has received fellowships and awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Toji Cultural Foundation, and the National Arts Council of Singapore. Her writing has appeared in The Cut, Real Simple, Literary Hub, Writer’s Digest, Zyzzyva, and the Best New Singaporean Short Stories. She holds an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from Stanford University. Born and raised in Singapore, she lives in San Francisco. She teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco and in Ashland University’s Low-Residency MFA Program.
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