The Counterfeit Family of Vee Crawford-Wong by Holland - OPTIONAL

Holland, L. Tam The Counterfeit Family of Vee Crawford-Wong, 357 pgs. Simon-Schuster, 2013.  $17.99.

Language: R (53+, 22+“f”), Mature Content: R; Violence G.

 

Vee is a typical teenager or not so typical.  He has a crush on one of the hottest girls in the school, wants to make the basketball team, gets into fights, and could be a good student, but isn’t.  He isn’t too tall or too short, too thin or too fat, but some mixture in-between which he credits to genetics, half-Chinese, half-American. An only child of a Chinese father and a white mother, he has no aunts, uncles, cousins, and his parents never talk about his grandparents or their past.  Throughout the book, Vee struggles to figure out who he is and where he belongs. When his history teacher assigns an essay on family history, Vee knows he’s in trouble.  Since his parents won’t talk about the past, using Google and Wikipedia to create a family story seems the only way to complete the assignment.  After he turns in the fabricated family history, things seem to go down hill quickly.  With a desperate desire to find family, Vee engages the help of a Chinese friend, to forge a letter from his estranged grandparents inviting his parents and their grandson (Vee) to visit them in China. His dad is very surprised to receive this letter, but agrees to take the family to China. The story intensifies as the family arrives in China, and Vee begins to consider all the pain he may cause by his deceit.

While I found it curious that a teenage boy would be so consumed with wanting to know his ancestors, the main character and the plot are well-developed and the story is engaging. Vee experiences a lot of character growth as he reflects on his self-centered behavior. He draws good conclusions, learns the difference between lust and love, that we shouldn’t put people in boxes, and that we create our own happiness. The author laid this out without seeming too preachy. , Overall, I enjoyed the book. However, the cover and theme would require pushing to a teenage audience, and because of the two sexual scenes, and number of swears and the F word, for which I gave an R rating, it may be best left for public libraries.

HS-OPTIONAL. Reviewer J. Truman