Keeping Up With Appearances

I didn't know what to expect from Kirstin Chen's 'Counterfeit' (2022). I knew it would be an easy read, but it could have turned out absolutely garbage. Instead, I was absolutely pleased by the plot, the writing and especially the ending. 

I finished the book in slightly under an hour and that's slow by my standards for these types of books. Still, it wasn't difficult to catch the plot and the details. Absolutely hilarious. If this is meant to be social satire, I love it!

Winnie Fang's life story and chosen path and her choice of business and a career is well, predictable. Or perhaps stereotypical. Winnie Fang dropped out of Stanford not because she couldn't make it, but she was found doing test papers for everyone else to earn a penny, and through doing those papers, she learnt the questions and aced every answer in all the papers. She found her calling in earning money off of buying actual bags from designer boutiques, and returning counterfeit bags weeks later. She managed to rope in Ava as her business partner. 

It's Ava Wong that's totally unexpected! Hahahah. I simply didn't see it coming. To have Ava Wong to be well, totally into it with her ex-college mate and current business partner, Winnie. I thought she would have given up Winnie to the detectives when they came calling. Ava Wong did the typical route of school, Stanford law school, admitted to the bar and became a lawyer, married well, but gave it up to become a Stay-At-Home-Mom who then flouted all rules and conventions, divorced her controlling husband and becomes top con-woman.

So you put these Asian American Stanford grads (or non-grads) to work in the ultimate scams and counterfeit games. Awesome. Ava was given the lightest sentence she could have wished for, for her part in the scam — she got "two years' probation, plus restitutions of five hundred thousand dollars. // I'm confident you won't make the same mistakes again and commit another crime. Don't prove me wrong, young lady."

Winnie remained in hiding in Beijing, and then she returned to America under a different name, and plastic surgery had altered face. Ava fulfilled her two years of probation. They got away with it, nailed the big kingpins instead (Kaiser Shih, Mak Yiu Fai and his daughter, and their black manufacturing factories in China, and their other illegal businesses), and moved on to counterfeiting diamonds. 

By the epilogue, I was totally chortling. 

Ava knows exactly what she means. The bag's never been used and likely never will be, but she will keep it forever as a symbol of her fearlessness and verve, of everything Winnie has taught her.

"I have something for you, too," Ava says. She unzips her suitcase and retrieves a plain padded mailer, hands it to Winnie.

Inside, wrapped in tissue, is a lab-grown three-carat round loose diamond the size of a fingernail. It sparkles like a meteor in Winnie's palm. Ava snaps on a light, while Winnie pulls out her jewelry loupe and tweezers and examines the stone. As promised, it is perfect—perfectly irregular, perfectly flawed, ready to be swapped in for a natural diamond set in an elegant platinum band.

This time around, they will hire men, all of marrying age; men who'll report solely to them. And when their handsome, strapping shopper walks into Tiffany's or Chopard or Harry Winston to return the engagement ring—utterly dejected over his would-be fiancée's no—what sales associate wouldn't want to be useful, to soothe his hurt feelings, and help make things right?

"Exquisite," Winnie says, lowering the stone to the table. "We'll start in Boston next month."

In the lamplight, the diamond winks like a girl with a secret.