Tech Wives

The dazzling, daring new novel from Kirstin Chen, internationally bestselling author of Counterfeit

'Kirstin Chen writes, with humor and verve, prose that's as addictive as a luxury handbag habit' RACHEL KHONG

'Chen is up to something innovative and subversive' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

All the money. All the luxury. None of the power.

Sam and Cecily meet in college. Fifteen years later, they are married to two of the most powerful men in tech.

Sam’s husband promises he’ll never be like the other self-obsessed, power-hungry pioneers. He wants the best for his workers. He’ll never buy a mega yacht.

Cecily’s husband, Winston, is responsible for the biggest online store the world has ever seen. They both know he’d be nowhere without her ideas, and even if the world conveniently ignores her, the exquisite life they’ve built together makes it all worth it.

But whispers are starting online about the missteps of both men. Terrible rumours of what they are capable of begin to surface – and soon each woman must make the ultimate choice. But how do you leave a man who runs the world?

From the acclaimed author of COUNTERFEIT comes a daring novel that uncovers the ugly side of the beautiful life.

Reviews

‘Tech Wives is such a reading pleasure! Deft, unexpected, funny, heartbreaking and utterly of the moment’ Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less

‘Kirstin Chen has created another dazzling, delicious page-turner. Tech Wives invites us into the fairytale world of tech billionaires, and provides both a sharp deconstruction of the genius-boy myth … an ambitious, riveting, and masterfully written coming-of-age story of two women and the friendship between them. I loved it, and I can’t wait to share it with my dearest friends’ Angie Kim

‘Tech Wives is every bit as much a novel about marriage as it is a thrilling peek behind the curtain of the Silicon Valley elite. With nuanced psychological acuity and drastically higher stakes, Chen crafts dizzying moral dilemmas and sets the world spinning in this dazzling novel’ Rufi Thorpe, author of Margo's Got Money Troubles

PRAISE FOR KIRSTIN CHEN'S COUNTERFEIT

'An entertaining, luxurious read – but beneath its glitz and flash, it is also a shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority' New York Times Book Review

‘Darkly comedic’ Daily Mail

'A startling, gleeful look at the American Dream and what counts as real in a world obsessed with image, this caper story follows two very different Chinese American women as they build a fake fashion empire that then threatens to come crashing down. Chen's use of story structure is masterful, as are her complicated, compelling characters' Washington Post

'If you appreciate a good caper, you'll want to pick up Kirstin Chen's novel about two Asian American women who turn a counterfeit handbag scheme into a big business … fast-paced and fun' TIME magazine, Best Books of Summer 2022

'Propulsive and captivating … with characters that both subvert and capitalize on the model-minority myth. No surprise that the sly feminist caper was the subject of a fierce eight-way bidding war for TV rights' Vogue, The Best Books of 2022