Review: Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen

I received an advanced review copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

Publisher: The Borough Press
Published: June 2022
Pages: 280

Synopsis

Meet Ava: rule-abiding lawyer who has ticked all of life’s boxes. She’s married to a successful surgeon and has just taken an indefinite career break to raise her adorable toddler. A picture-perfect life.

Meet Winnie: Ava’s old college roommate. Once awkward, quiet and apparently academically challenged, she left Stanford in a shroud of scandal. But now, she is charismatic, wealthy and has returned to town dripping in designer accessories. An actual perfect life.

When the two women bump into one another at a local coffee shop, it seems like fate has intervened: Winnie’s new-found success is courtesy of a shady business and she needs a favour; Ava is realising she is not built for the stay-at-home life. But what starts as one favour turns into two, then three, and soon Ava is in far deeper than she ever imagined.

Now Ava has to make the ultimate decision: cut and run, or risk it all?

My Thoughts…

This review comes embarrassingly late, given how long ago I actually read this book but please bear with me as I (maybe) finally catch up on my backlog…

I seem to be in the minority on this one, as I saw a fair number of good reviews, but sadly I didn’t really enjoy Counterfeit. On paper, this had all the elements needed for me to love it: estranged friends reconnecting; reflections on motherhood and patriarchy even among seemingly privileged women; a high-stakes international criminal operation; a critique of consumerism and the luxury goods market; and even elements of racial inequality and American exceptionalism. And yet…

My main complaint about this is that, despite everything that was going on, I was ultimately bored. There was very little excitement and I found the characters to not be as developed as they could (and arguably should) have been. There was also an over-reliance on stereotyping which couldn’t really be explained away with it being solely the narrator’s opinions and which ultimately felt like a lazy way out of delving deeper into the themes that were teased. Speaking of which, none of the themes felt to me like it was being explored in any meaningful way: it was mostly presented as whining and complaining on the part of the main characters and didn’t really add anything new to the discourse.

That being said, I did enjoy the fact that the narration was framed as a statement being given to the police by a character who definitely had a significant self-interest in presenting events in a certain light. I also liked the character switch, which breathed some fresh air in an otherwise stale narrative.