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COUNTERFEIT

A delightfully different caper novel with a "Gone Girl"–style plot twist.

What a tangled web we weave when first we practice selling fake designer handbags.

Chen rejiggers some of the ingredients of her debut, Soy Sauce for Beginners (2014), and comes up with a winner in this clever, sharp, and slyly funny novel about a long con. Ava Wong, a Chinese American Stanford grad, has left her corporate position to be a full-time mom, but little Henri is such a terror she ends up delegating him to a nanny. Meanwhile, her surgeon husband, a Frenchman named Olivier, is working so hard to support the family that he takes an apartment near the hospital in Palo Alto. These disappointments leave her particularly vulnerable to the influence of the evil Winnie Fang. From mainland China, Winnie was Ava’s roommate freshman year of college until she had to withdraw from school under the cloud of an SAT cheating scandal. All these years later, she's back, and boy, has she changed. She’s had eyelid surgery, lost the accent, attained American citizenship, and is carrying the ultimate status symbol—a Birkin bag. A couple pages in, we learn that this narrative of renewed friendship is being delivered to a detective. It seems Ava was manipulated into working with Winnie in her global handbag scam. Her job was to buy a high-end purse at a luxury shop, then return it a few days later for credit. Meanwhile, the return is actually a meticulously counterfeited duplicate manufactured in China, and the real one is sold on eBay at a discount. As the story glides among San Francisco, Hong Kong, and China, Chen turns the stereotype of the docile Asian woman on its head. She also has great fun with status details, from collegiate Winnie’s “pink T-shirt with the words cuty pie plastered across the front in mulitcolored rhinestones” to the “rare crocodile Birkin 25, the color of merlot, of rubies, of blood...worth at least forty thousand dollars” that Ava receives during a classic over-the-top, all-night business deal.

A delightfully different caper novel with a "Gone Girl"–style plot twist.

Pub Date: June 7, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-06-311954-3

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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THE WEDDING PEOPLE

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.

Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.

Uneven but fitfully amusing.

Pub Date: July 30, 2024

ISBN: 9781250899576

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024

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