Counterfeit Luxury Wannabes

by Kirstin Chen – 288 pages – Book Club Moderator: Scarlet Alvarado

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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.

Plot Summary

The novel opens as former corporate lawyer Ava Wong recounts to a detective her involvement in a counterfeit handbag scheme with her college roommate, Winnie Fang. Ava, a stay-at-home mother, is a stark contrast to the glamorous Winnie, who left Stanford after a scandal involving falsified SAT scores. Ava claims Winnie preyed on her vulnerability—a cut-off credit card from her husband and a need for help with her son’s preschool—to draw her into the business of selling authentic luxury bags and returning high-end replicas. The replicas are made by a Chinese businessman, Boss Mak, who needs a liver transplant.

A Conflicting Perspective

As Ava tells her story, she presents herself as a remorseful victim, secretly admiring Winnie’s audacity and independence. However, her view is challenged by a narrative shift to Winnie, who is hiding in China after getting plastic surgery. Winnie’s perspective reveals a different Ava—not a helpless victim, but a sharp, ruthless accomplice who used her innocent appearance to get away with their crimes. Their business ultimately collapsed when a counterfeit return was discovered, leading to a police investigation.

Confronting the Past

Our main character continues to portray herself as a dutiful wife who has come clean out of a sense of duty, but her actions suggest a different motive. After piecing together how the police discovered the scheme, she turns herself in and cooperates, leading to Boss Mak’s arrest. Ava calls Winnie to inform her of her relatively light sentence, and Winnie returns to the U.S.

The epilogue reveals the true nature of their relationship and Ava’s character. Two years after her probation ends, a now-divorced Ava meets Winnie to discuss a new venture: counterfeiting lab-grown diamonds. The women toast their success, celebrating their audacity and their defiance of a system they exploited together. The novel ends with the two women poised to continue their criminal enterprise.

About the author

K I R S T I N C H E N is the New York Times best-selling author of three novels. Her latest, Counterfeit, out now from William Morrow/HarperCollins (US) and The Borough Press (UK), is the June ’22 Reese’s Book Club pick. It has also been recommended by The New York Times, The Washington Post, People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Time, Oprah Daily, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Parade, and more. Television rights have been optioned by Sony Pictures. Her previous two novels are Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners.

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.

Other books about this author.

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Gretchen Lin leaves her heart (or at least her floundering marriage) in San Francisco, moves back to her childhood home in Singapore and finds herself face-to-face with the twin headaches she’s avoided her entire adult life: her mother’s drinking problem and the machinations of her father’s artisanal soy sauce business. Surrounded by family, Gretchen struggles with the tension between personal ambition and filial duty, but still finds time to explore a new romance with the son of a client, an attractive man of few words. When an old American friend comes to town, the two of them are pulled into the controversy surrounding Gretchen’s cousin, the only male grandchild and the heir apparent to Lin’s Soy Sauce. In the midst of increasing pressure from her father to remain permanently in Singapore—and pressure from her mother to do just the opposite—Gretchen must decide whether she will return to her marriage and her graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory, or sacrifice everything and join her family’s crusade to spread artisanal soy sauce to the world.

Buy the book here: Counterfeit

Hope you enjoy

Book Club Questions:

How would you describe Winnie and Ava’s personality?
What do you think of the relationship that Ava has with her husband?
Do you think Ava’s son really has a condition?
What do you think about how Ava perceives her maternity?
Do you believe that Ava is really innocent?
What do you think about the turn that the book took from part II, regarding the truth of how everything happened, is it credible?
What would they have added to the story?
What do you think of the development of the characters.
Favorite phrase, quote.
Favorite moment

Character Analysis

Ava Wong

is a protagonist and a point-of-view character in the novel. A 37-year-old former corporate lawyer from a high-achieving family, Ava feels unfulfilled with her life as a stay-at-home mother. Her marriage to an ambitious surgeon, Olivier, lacks emotional connection, and she feels trapped by the expectations of success placed on her since childhood. This dissatisfaction drives her to join her college friend, Winnie, in a counterfeit handbag scheme.

She is ambitious, cunning, and quick-witted, using her innocent appearance to her advantage. She is loyal to those she cares about, but she is also not afraid to commit fraud to achieve what she wants. While she tells a story of remorse and regret to the detective, the novel suggests that she never truly changes. Instead, she is a static character who manipulates situations to get what she wants, ultimately pursuing a new criminal enterprise with Winnie after her probation ends.

Winnie (Wenyi) Fang

is the other protagonist and a point-of-view character in the second half of the novel. She is a sharp, ambitious, and glamorous woman who appears to have it all. Unlike Ava, Winnie comes from a middle-class background and had to work hard to achieve her status. When she lost her college scholarship, she devised a plan to get a green card, showing her resourceful and opportunistic nature.

Winnie is the mastermind behind the counterfeit handbag business and sees Ava as a willing and ruthless partner, not a victim. Her reflections reveal a character who is creative and ambitious, always looking for the next opportunity. Despite her criminal success, Winnie feels a deep longing to be settled and find contentment, and she values things for their sentimental worth rather than their monetary value.

Dr. Olivier Desjardins

Olivier is Ava’s husband, an ambitious and well-meaning but self-centered surgeon. He is a secondary character whose actions—or lack thereof—drive Ava to seek a life of her own. He is portrayed as ethical and ambitious in his career but emotionally distant and unavailable to his wife. He is too busy with his work to provide the emotional support Ava needs, contributing to the strain in their marriage. Olivier remains a static character throughout the narrative, and his engagement at the end suggests that he, too, has a chance at a different kind of happiness.

The Maks

Boss Mak, or Mak Yui Fai, is a 70-year-old Chinese businessman who runs a factory that produces designer handbags. He is a secondary character who is both a victim (in need of a liver transplant) and a source of corruption. He lures Winnie into his business with charm and expensive gifts, but he is a ruthless man who uses intimidation to get what he wants.

His daughter, Mandy, takes over the business when he falls ill. She is a foil for Ava, as she is also ambitious, polished, and sophisticated. Like Ava and Winnie, Mandy is quick-witted and unapologetic about her shady business practices. The novel suggests that she will also recover from her legal troubles and continue to pursue her ambitions, mirroring the unapologetic nature of the protagonists.

Background

Asian Americans as a “Model Minority”

Counterfeit plays on the “model minority” stereotype of Asian Americans. This term, which groups together diverse Asian cultures and ethnicities, suggests that Asian Americans are universally intelligent, well-educated, and prosperous. While these traits seem positive, they are harmful, racist stereotypes that obscure the reality of different Asian groups. This myth can lead to a dismissal of the struggles and prejudices faced by Asian Americans, including their needs for mental and public health services. In the novel, Ava and Winnie exploit this stereotype by hiring Asian American women as shoppers in their counterfeit scheme, knowing that they will be seen as trustworthy and law-abiding.

Designer Goods and the Replica Trade

A designer handbag is more than just an accessory; it’s a symbol of wealth, status, and exclusivity. The high cost reflects not just quality materials, but also the limited number of bags released each season. One of the most sought-after bags is the Hermès Birkin, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and have waiting lists of several years.

The world of designer bags has a dark side: the replica trade. While legal replicas are “inspired by” designer styles, illegal “superfakes” are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, copying the same materials, craftsmanship, and trademarks. These counterfeits are illegal, and in some countries, simply owning one can lead to steep fines or even imprisonment. The characters in Counterfeit are involved in this illegal trade, which draws the attention of law enforcement agencies like the Department of Homeland Security.