This was a fantastic book. I listened to the audiobook but once this releases to the public, I want to pick up a physical copy and do a reread.

I don’t always find myself enjoying books relating to Covid, I’m not really sure why but this one was didn’t fall into that category. I loved this book so much. It started strong, continued strong, and ended strong. I loved the balance between fictional horror and realistic horror. This book contains supernatural elements with ghosts, gore, and also tackles racism, prejudice, and bigotry.

This book very plainly laid out the effects of Covid specifically relating to Chinese people and the racism that openly cropped up because of it. The hate crimes, the cruel names, the mistreatment and stereotypes. Covid gave a lot of people the nerve and (in their minds), the excuse to be unapologetically and openly racist.

Cora is a crime scene cleaner and is no stranger to gore. But seeing her sister murdered at the start of the book by being shoved in front of a train, is much different. Cora starts seeing ghosts while investigating the murder of her sister and other Chinese people in her community.

Even though this book contained a lot of heaviness with very real struggles, it wasn’t too much to read. It was extremely well-done and balanced and I never felt overwhelmed while still being able to grasp the severity. I loved the plot, I loved the message, I loved the characters. The pacing was great. Everything was great. I can’t really say that I have anything to complain about in this book. I would definitely recommend this to everyone and I will be buying a physical copy once it is released.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to listen to this audiobook. All opinions are enthusiastically my own.

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

People of color historically have not assumed my ethnicity but plenty of white folks have referred to me as "Chinese" by assumption (because the only Asian ethnicities they know are Chinese or Japanese *insert eye roll here*). Folks familiar with East Asian cultures will assume I am Filipina, and they will assume correctly, but I am also Chinese even though folks would say I am visibly Filipina. So I say all of this because no one really "mistakes" me for being solely Chinese, which is a privilege I had during the anti-Chinese sentiments at the height of the pandemic and what Trump called the "China virus". However, I still held a lot of anxiety and concern for my grandma (from whom my Chinese heritage comes from), and I heard from many of my students (who are primarily international students from China and Taiwan) who experienced continuous threats, discrimination, and hateful language spewed their way during 2020 and 2021 especially.

I recognize folks have a hard time reading books set during the COVID-19 pandemic, and I fully sympathize with why. It continues to be a traumatic time to revisit and relive, and if you are of East Asian descent (and specifically Chinese), then this book will likely doubly hit a bit too close to home. If that's not content you can engage with right now, totally fair. However, if you ever are in the headspace to read a book during this time period, I highly recommend Cora Zeng's story, as Kylie Lee Baker is an excellent writer. I truly continue to be in awe of her, and I cried reading through different parts of this horror novel.

(I don't think this is a spoiler because I'm pretty sure this is part of the premise of the book but..) Cora Zeng (multiracial - white and Chinese) watches her sister Delilah (100% Chinese because they have different mothers, & their father lives in China) get murdered at a train station during the pandemic after receiving jarring news from Delilah. It happens so quickly that you are left feeling the same whiplash and shock that Cora experiences too. Cora then goes on to become a crime scene cleaner in Chinatown, and quickly notices that the most recently deceased are all East Asian women, with dead bats at the crime scene, pointing to a serial killer. Cora also begins feeling haunted, and we dabble in paranormal horror, which was such a fascinating part of this book!

The commentary on anti-Asian sentiments, misogyny towards East Asian women, and

online incel communities and how dangerous their anger is

was scathing, pointed, and devastating, if sometimes a bit on the nose (but honestly, I don't really mind this because I felt it was executed and illustrated well in regards to being cohesive to the story at hand). The unveiling of the murders towards the end had me wrecked, and absolutely filled with rage and exhaustion. Kylie Lee Baker did a great job of unraveling this in a way that unfortunately speaks to the current state of our society, and invites readers to reflect.

I also really enjoyed Cora as a main character too - she is flawed, jealous, lonely, depressed, and far from your cookie-cutter, everybody-loves-her FMC. She is navigating (or repressing) deeply complex feelings, such as realizing that Delilah was literally about to abandon her once she realized they'd have to be sheltered in place together. Your sister would rather be on another continent than just shelter in place? Ouch. (Though, I also understand. Delilah wanted to be in China, surrounded by Chinese people and her dad, who adores her, rather than stuck in a country that was openly hateful towards Chinese people. However, she did not extend an invitation to Cora, which *is* hurtful) When healthy and goofy sisterhood is so heavily pushed in familial dramas and sitcoms, it's glaringly obvious and sad when your own relationship does not reflect that sunshine, compassion, and camaraderie. Cora feels unloved, unwanted, unseen, and a clear lack of belonging. Horror is such a powerful genre, because not only are the paranormal entities terrifying, but to have an honest look at the human experience is too. 

The author's note was a powerful note to end on, and I think I highlighted the entire thing. I highly, highly recommend this, and am so grateful for the e-ARC.

thank you netgalley & hachette australia and new zealand for providing me a copy of this book in return for a honest review 🥰

this was such a powerful book and i was not expecting that at all.

bat eater follows cora zeng, a wasian twenty-something trying to navigate her life during the covid-19 pandemic. cora lives with her sister, until she’s tragically pushed in front of a train right in front of cora’s eyes. suddenly her life is upended, and she becomes a crime scene cleaner. but suddenly cora witnesses an uptick of murdered east asian women, and as she becomes entangled with something living in her home, cora seeks to find out what’s happening to her fellow “bat eaters”.

cora is an amazing protagonist. she feels realistic in so many ways, such as how she approaches the “roommate” she has, but also in general. all her decisions feel like they make sense, and she doesn’t do anything out of character just to further the plot, which i really appreciate. also!!! hello!!! cora is great ocd representation!!! yes yes it’s the ‘cLiChE’ contamination ocd, but still, cora’s paranoia felt so raw, especially compounded during a pandemic. i was very much like her (until i caught covid for the first time) so i very much related to cora, which always adds extra enjoyment to a book for me. the character development she undergoes throughout the story also feels very natural, and honestly i forgot at times i was reading a work of fiction and that cora wasn’t a real person. that’s how natural she felt. 

speaking of covid, im usually one who hates when books mention it. it completely breaks my immersion and honestly im not a fan….. usually. this book does not follow that pattern for me. the entire plot hinges on covid-19, so it’s not just some stupid throwaway line which is what i hate, but instead its immeshed in the plot flawlessly. and i mean the entire plot DOES follow covid-19, because without that, we wouldn’t have delilah being killed due to being a “bat eater”, or the bat carcasses found at the east-asian women’s crime scene, or even the rise of anti-asian hate in this book make any sense. i liked seeing the steady progression of these plot elements, and the book didn’t feel fantastical because what it was talking about *did* happen to asians worldwide during covid-19. i really enjoyed how the themes of racism surrounding the pandemic were explored, and the character’s actions and reactions to it mimicked reality, which i liked. because events did mimic reality, i didn’t feel like they were being exaggerated in this book. 

i’ll be honest and say i didn’t care about most of the side characters. maybe because i loved cora so much, who knows. but yifei is a queen. not only was she integral to the plot in, yet again, a way that felt natural, but she was funny, caring, knowledgeable, and mysterious. i also liked that yifei didn’t take any shit, and she felt like a great foil to cora — one woman too scared to do anything for fear of being targeted, and one woman who’s doing whatever she wants because she’ll never know when her time is up. i really liked that. the other side characters i kind of didn’t care about. i mean the only other significant characters were harvey & aunt z, and they were ok, but didn’t pop out to me like yifei did. 

now honestly, i only have one “gripe” with this book. it’s not even a gripe. i just wanted more horror. this felt maybe more like magical realism to me? idk. there defo were some horror elements, but i expected not only more horror, but for the horror to be more. you know?

also, ill be honest, the plot is… difficult. it was for me, but i can see it not being for everyone. i was able to latch on to cora so quickly, i straight up didn’t even care what we were doing plot-wise. cora was so engaging to me honestly i forgot about the entire serial killer plot for a while 😭 like only at the end i was like “oh yeah that plot! omg!” not to say i didn’t like it! i did like the serial killer plot! but there is a lot going on story wise at times, what with the hungry ghost festival, the serial killer, the crime scenes, the pandemic, hate crimes, cora’s ocd, cora’s feelings towards delilah, etc. not to say i felt like it was too much going on, but i feel like people looking for a book focused mainly on one of those elements or plot points won’t enjoy this, as cora is the anchor, and everything else kind of works around her. i still enjoyed it tho! 

bat eater is a horror book in many ways. but the true horror in this book is found not only in the treatment of asian people during the covid-19 pandemic, but in the horror of death, the afterlife, and achieving justice for those wronged in life. it’s not only a novel with mystery and gore and death, but a novel about learning to be your own person, and letting go. 

Bat Eater follows Cora Zeng as she navigates a pandemic-stricken world where people who look like her are being blamed and discriminated against. Through her job as a crime scene cleaner, Cora and her colleagues become privy to the often hidden extremes of this very prejudice.

I’ll start by saying that this is very much a Covid-centric book, so approach it with care if you find such themes triggering. As someone who has largely avoided Covid-related narratives, I’m glad I took the risk with this one.

While I occasionally felt that the pacing was slightly off, I was quickly drawn back in, which is a testament to Kylie Lee Baker’s skill as a writer. In Bat Eater, Baker masterfully combines beautiful prose with unpredictable, gruesome moments and the pervasive fear of the unknown. This is interwoven with a painfully authentic portrayal of real-life horrors such as racism and misogyny.

When I say the gruesome moments are intense, I’m not exaggerating. Personally, I appreciated what these visceral elements added to the story, but it’s worth noting that they might be challenging for readers who struggle with graphic gore.

I recommend going into this book knowing as little as possible, whilst being mindful of the trigger warnings. I truly believe I enjoyed it more because I went in with minimal knowledge.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the e-ARC. All opinions are my own.

Bat Eater 

 

Entering into this tale of horror you smack face first into the horrific death of Dehlila. Much like how she is cut short. A misleading intro. Excellently executed. 

 

This definitely expanded my knowledge of racial slurs. Stuff I’d heard in passing but never realized what it was. Unsettling. Bat eater for example. Absolutely in love with the dark humor throughout this book. Spot on, makes you laugh then shudder internally, “oh that was dark.” Cora is stuck in a bizarre state of trauma. Her sisters gruesome death and subsequent job has her essentially reliving it as well as an awful glimpse of her own death as the cadavers of conveniently Asian (doubt Chinese only) are coming up in her work AO as a crime scene cleaner. 

 

I don’t know how to feel about the ghost. Unsettling to say the least. Well executed but unsettling to read and envision. 

set during the covid-19 pandemic, the novel explores the rise of anti-asian hate crimes and overall rise in anti-asian hate that followed. cora zeng is a crime scene cleaner who watched her sister get pushed in front of a train and die in the very first chapter of this book, the man shouting “bat eater” as he did so. the novel follows her as she is left to deal with the grief and trauma of that event while still trying to live her life, going to work and trying to survive the pandemic. if that isn’t enough, the crime scenes she’s cleaning up have her and her coworkers wondering if a serial killer is rising in new york city, with bats showing up at the scene, and she’s been witnessing some strange activities… the hungry ghosts, maybe, that her aunt talks about every august.

this is the first horror book i’ve read in a while that really gave me chills and had me scared of the dark. the way that kylie lee baker writes scenes is beautiful and horrifying at the same time. every crime scene that cora had to clean up or mention of blood and guts left me feeling squeamish and uncomfortable, while the hungry ghosts that lie in wait in the dark spaces cora sees had me anxious. it was a book i both wanted to put down to give myself a break, but also didn’t want to stop because of just how good it was. the plot being put into covid was poignant, even to this day, and didn’t feel like a gimmick an author threw in just because or thrown in lazily as just the background to the story as i’ve seen in other books released post-pandemic. no, covid-19 and the rise in anti-asian hate were very intrinsically linked and it is shown throughout the novel. it’s amazingly done, even if a bit hard to get through (as many social commentary horror books are) and i couldn’t recommend it enough. i can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy.

a huge thank you to netgalley and harlequin trade publishing for the arc of this ebook in exchange for an honest review!