clovetra's reviews
216 reviews

lowkey i had no expectations going into this. but this book was perfect for the week ive had LMAO. i will always love my dark gritty gorey horrors but sometimes you need a book where a good called poopfruit exists and there are two kaiju named after twilight ❤️

the only “issue” i had with this book was one ill always have within the scifi genre, which is that the world confused my simpleton mind too much even after explanations. jamie is the perfect main character because he is the everyman in a location where literally everyone has a PHD so i thought the explanations of how the world worked would be explained simpler for jamie in-universe and therefore me but…. not really. like only really at the end did i get the core mechanism of how the kaiju earth works and the “barrier” concept. like i could not work it out in my head. that kind of goes for…. well every other sciencey thing in this book. 

the plot at times also felt a bit…. Meh? not bad, but not engaging. if this book was not as humorous as it was i could defo see myself not having fun because the plot was a bit basic & predictable. but honestly im not too mad because i had a great time. 

the cast of characters were fun. i really liked jamie’s inner circle, they were all super engaging. special shout out to niamh the resident they/them 🔥🔥🔥🔥 ugh i love books where a character is lgbt+ and nobody gives a shit. “ok niamh uses they/them pronouns who cares we’ve got literal fucking kaiju on our hands”. I LOVEE ITTT. i will say having *everyone* be this goofy on the job did throw me out of the immersion a lot, and at the award ceremony thing i defo was cringing from the facebook-esque humour. but that’s literally like 4 pages so can i really be that annoyed? nah.

i do think this book wonderfully toes the line between explaining the “magic” vs not over explaining it and making it stupid, but i fear i am just too stupid. i could nawt fully go with the flow because i still was trying to work out how the fuck kaijus exist. yeah i probably would’ve liked this more if i could just let go and go along for the ride but im autistic. sue me.

honestly with how fun this was scalzi has easily pushed himself into one of my favourite authors of the year. and all his books are now at the very top of my tbr. i had such fun with this, i can’t wait to see what his other books entail

gonna be honest! i don’t have much to say for this!

the concept is really interesting, but i still struggle to tell how tf penny remembers her job, but yet people come to the store asleep? i might just be dumb tho

each chapter kept expanding on the lore of this world & it was super interesting, but the characters all felt flat and generic. 

idk im not really the biggest fan of slice of life novels. i mean i like them in the moment! this was relaxing as hell! but they usually don’t stick with me and i find the genre at times to be a bit repetitive. i’ll say tho out of all the slice of life novels i’ve read, this would be my fave simply because it put a unique spin on the genre.

i don’t want to be a dick because this memoir was very clearly needed & its premise is good. tbh even calling it a “premise” seems scummy of me because a real human being had to be raped in order for this novel to exist. so i do think ito’s story needed to be told to audiences outside of japan who may be unfamiliar with her story. god knows i was.

there are points of this novel where the text became repetitive. i don’t mean in any way shape or form “repetitive” in terms of her writing about her feelings surrounding her experience. but certain things were repeated a lot, for example, her questioning the arrest warrant was extremely drawn out. i imagine it was very true to life in that as the thought kept repeating in her head, she repeated it as often in the book. but as a reader it almost became… dare i say boring? kind of? after a while it almost lost its meaning to me because it was repeated over and over again.

i do think the statistics were important and needed in this book. it put into perspective for me, a non-japanese person, the true state of the japanese criminal justice system. like my god that story about the fucking golf student. absolutely horrifying.

what else was horrifying was the entire way her case was handled by the higher ups in the police…….. holy fuck. i actually had to pause and put the book down because i was so mortified that this is actually a true story, and not only did someone have to go through this mishandling of her crime, but the fact that the people “supposed” to protect us were corrupt in ways i thought weren’t possible. jesus christ.

i don’t want to invalidate this book. honestly i think everyone in the entire world should read it. but i am someone who is an enjoyment-rater first and foremost, and i can’t lie and say this book was enjoyable. because it wasn’t. it was fucking nauseating. but i think i will recommend thid book to everyone in the world ever. 

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. 

what if i threw myself off of a cliff

in the wise words of trisha paytas, “IM FREEEEEE!!!!!!!!! WORST EXPERIENCE OF MY FUCKING LIFE”

ok but on a serious note — i did not have a fun time. i do not really know why i finished this, other than the fact it wasn’t as dreadful of an experience of other classics i’ve dnf’ed (cough cough the count of monte cristo) and i wanted to understand why this book is a classic and loved & why dostoevsky is praised as one of the best writers to exist. to be honest, i do understand it! i can defo see the positives but….. it was a chop for me.

let me tell you the few parts of this text where i experienced a positive feeling:

1. part 2 of the text, right after rodia kills the pawnbroker. that was interesting i guess. 2. dunia shooting svidrigailov. bad bitch 🔥. 3. svidrigailov killing himself . and im not even saying i enjoyed this just because he was awful. but i really liked the writing of that chapter.  4. the funeral chapter was lowkey interesting because so much tea was being spilt. 5. pofiry telling rodia he’s suspected him for ages and has even been using razumikhin as an unknowing pawn. FIRE MOVE MY BOY.

and that’s it! 5 chapters. in a 500 page book.

so let’s get onto what i did not like! almost everything LMAOOOO

ok i’ll get more specific. but honestly im just a full hater surrounding this book with no specific rhyme or reason. but let’s give some reasons.

rodia is so boring. he is supposed to be the heart of the book — his internal conflict, his thoughts, his actions, those who surround him, etc. i just found him utterly predictable and one-note. i don’t mind the fact that one minute homeboy is sane and the next minute he’s literally comatose for 3 days because he is that wracked with stress over a murder. girl i would be stressed too! but other than that i felt he lacked any depth. i do think later in the text this is developed more with the paper he published & his dialogue in part V chapter VI. but before that i was BOOREEEDDD. and i cared even less about the rest of the characters. literally everyone had one defining trait or fact about them. like what can i tell you about katerina other than she is tubercular and a bit batshit. luzhin? asshole. razumikhin? nice and educated. like nobody is interesting. yawn.

as always with classics, this book fucking rambles. ok yes i will concede at times rambling is necessary for this book, either in character for rodia’s mania or for dostoevsky to ponder philosophical themes. i’ll give him that. but man sometimes this book just dragged on and on and on and on. and i’m like.. do we need to read about rodia walking aimlessly around the town for the 7th time. did i really have to listen to marmeladov share information that is told to us by like 3 other characters? what are we doing here man. and i’m not even saying “oh just every sentence and paragraph needs to be shorter”. no. there’s just a lot of unnecessary fluff in this book. some random things still make sense thematically, but some things? I DONT CAAAREEEE

i did not give a fuck about the philosophical thoughts. ok ill be honest i did enjoy the ponderings related to rodia’s paper, and the morality of murder, and who is “above the law”… but other than that….. YAWWWNNNN. idk it felt like being forced to read a textbook except i was put into the classes’ subject to be tortured. i like philosophy to a certain degree, but idk at some point dostoevsky bored my ass. and i get he was the leading man in a lot of philosophical concepts, so sure i’d be bored! this is common knowledge to me in 2025! but back in dostoevsky’s times these concepts were unique and novel! but honestly i dont even think that’s the reason. i just think dostoevsky is not an engaging writer in this book.

i really thought i would like this. i enjoy classics with a bit of a deeper message and intriguing characters who are flawed. plus i studied a teensy little bit of the russian revolution in hs, so i thought with my “background knowledge 🤓👆” i’d have more fun. alas, i fucking hated every waking moment dedicated to reading this, apart from the 5 chapters i mentioned earlier. i started hating this so bad i had to play an audiobook whilst playing cookie run. THIS BOOK WAS SO BAD IT BROUGHT BACK MY COOKIE RUN ADDICITION FROM 2021. 

anyways, fuck rodia, fuck crime, fuck punishment, and fuck classics who yap about nothing. 

i can get why the average person would love this, but sadly for me this wasn’t it chief.

easily the biggest issue i had was with the psychology talk. sorry im actually so fucking autistic about the field of psychology and the dialogue used in relation to that was…. cringe imo! all the psychotherapy talk theo implemented felt like i was reading someone’s parody of what they think a psychotherapist sounds like. and it’s not even just an issue with theo. indra also has a bad habit of doing this… like wtf do you mean “I find myself feeling very maternal towards her.” can you sound not like a robot omg. and diomedes… idk i felt like his characterisation was almost trying too hard to be quirky and loveable that i really didn’t care. the only character in the ward that even remotely interested me was christian, and the minute his “mystery” was solved, he became almost formulaic. idk this text almost feels like all the characters are surface level, or all their dialogue are just boxes to check off. i really didn’t care about anyone other than their role as a plot point — i really only cared about finding out the truth of gabriel’s death.

the plot twist was insanely predictable. maybe that’s because i was already sceptical on this book because of its ‘therapy talk’ so i was looking more closer to solve the mystery, but it felt almost too easy? i kept almost second guessing my logic… come to find out my guess of the culprit not even 10% deep into this was correct. sigh. i mean it’s not a bad thing to have ur murder be able to be solved early! it means the breadcrumbs were left well. but idk its almost like this was too clear. i will say i defo didn’t guess the “nuances” e.g. the why of the crime, and i won’t lie and say it made me fully gasp. i’d say until the proper “reveal” i only knew the culprit, but the working pieces were very interesting, and were a good spin on the classic murder trope’s motive. i did have to fully sit and close the book to ponder all the past chapters, and i was impressed regarding how with one line i viewed the entire book differently. i must give michaelides props there 👏👏 i will say tho the actual “ending” itself was pretty anticlimactic. i defo expected more in that department.

maybe ive oversaturated myself with mystery thrillers. or, counter point, i am perfect, and the issue is 100% with this book (/j im trolling). 

idk based on the hype this book has surrounding it, i expected…. More. maybe this is a case of my expectations being unrealistic. or maybe once you’ve read one mystery thriller you’ve read them all. 

oh jiwon…. i had such high hopes for you. were my expectations unrealistic? yeah probably. did i wish i loved this more? yeah.

did i still have a decent time? yeah!

this book is tagged as adult but reads sooooo much like a YA. which that’s fine! but then tag it that way so my expectations are changed. i was expecting something a bit more insane like maeve fly & instead i got she is a haunting. iykyk

the biggest issue of this book is the first half of this book. it wasn’t great. the first half almost acts like a set-up for all the plot in the second half, but instead it feels repetitive and lacking depth. like ok i get we need some time to give a shit about the characters, but when spending the first half developing characters and they still feel boring…. it’s not good. i only really enjoyed jiwon in the second half of the book. almost everyone else felt like a trope or very formulaic, and had one discernible trait. and the minute almost every character was introduced i could predict where the plot was going to take them. 

this book also made several missteps in my opinion.

first, giving jiwon a brain tumour was stupid. it felt like a hail mary. sure it made sense seeing as she was hallucinating, but it felt like it was almost completely random with no foreshadowing and rhyme or reason to it other than to get jiwon to still be in the hospital & get off scott free from george’s attempted murder. also, her relationship with alexis not going anywhere annoyed me. like seriously what was the point of having a subplot about their will-they-won’t they? the story doesn’t end in a way that has any pay off for this plot point, and instead it felt like it was wasted time that could’ve gone to fleshing out the horror elements earlier, or to explore more of jiwon’s family.

i will say though, i really liked the horror elements (once the book actually got to them). the descriptions of the eyes was sublime to read, and god at some points i almost felt a tad nauseous. i really think that point was well done.

i had such high hopes for this. i was really looking forward to this, and this was easily one of my most looked forward to reads of 2025. instead, i got served a big slice of disappointment pie :(

i really don’t know how i finished this. or why. i have never been this baffled by a book. and i mean baffled in a bad way.
the plot is insanely complicated to the point i had no idea what the fuck was happening. isn’t the point of mystery novels to allow your reader to semi-follow the mystery? guess this book didn’t get the memo. the concept itself is neat, but it instead results in way too many players, too many strings to keep ahold of, and by the end, none of them really come together in a nice little bow. instead they come together like when you cut your wrapping paper too short and instead just cut a square and stick it overtop to hide the fact you fucked up your measurements. trying to keep track of not only every character, but every host, every changeable event, everyone’s roles throughout the day, and what has happened for 8 days straight is exhausting. i as a reader should not have to almost make a fucking mind map to grasp your plot. there’s a fine line between interestingly complex and confusing to the point i think sherlock holmes would have an aneurysm trying to solve what in the fuck was happening here for 507 pages.
the characters were boring. nobody interested me. i didn’t care if evelyn was saved, i didn’t give a shit about anna, and i really didn’t care about aiden. cmon now after 500 pages i should care about our main character. but i dont!
the explanation for this time loop is…. boring and under explained. the explanation in general was ok, but it literally was just touched on and we moved on. every single goddamn explanation beyond blackheath sucked.
this book tried to do about 75 different things all at once, and it resulted in 75 underbaked, poorly explained and downright unnecessary plot points. not to mention by the end the explanation of the “murder” did not pay off, and instead i just sat there being like ‘oh…. ok whatever.’ like it was not stupid, i just felt for how much was going on and the sheer complexity, the reveal was so boring and simple. 
this book pissed me off. i would like to come back to it one day in the future to see if i can actually follow what the fuck is going on, but i doubt i could, because you need to literally be a MENSA to follow this plot.
and before anyone asks “why did you give this two stars if you very clearly hated it?” because it still managed to interest me enough to want to find out how the murder unfolded. sue me.

idk im not feeling this one right now ! idk i don’t care about this book at all. i am not interested by it rn. might come back to it later in 2025, might not!