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.