6 ⭐️

One of the best horror books I’ve read to date. It’s gory, haunting, horrific and devastating. The plot, pacing and writing are perfection. This book will be cemented into the top books I’ve read for life. I will pick up any book this author puts out.

Please reach out if you need any publicity or reader for this author in the future.

This was so good! You could feel Cora's anxiety with germs and the kill scenes😲. Epic. The Asian community received so much backlash from COVID it really showed how racist Americans are.

Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker is a dark, mesmerizing read that combines rich world-building with a gripping, fast-paced plot. Baker’s writing immerses you in a haunting, fantastical world, while her complex characters add depth to the suspense. It’s an intense and unforgettable story that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Covid 19 was a difficult time for the country, but I can't imagine living through it as Cora Zeng. What a nightmare. Cora lives in New York during the pandemic, and was already struggling to find her place. She doesn't fit in with her Chinese culture, because she grew up americanized, but she isn't accepted as an American either because of how she looks. She hates germs, and takes almost neurotic measures to ensure cleanliness. Her chosen profession is disgusting (and facinsating) but is the best she can do given the circumstances. Add in losing the most important person in her life is a gruesome and horrific manor, plus the fact she might be going crazy and you're in for a wild story.

Right away, and throughout, the horror aspect shines. It's woven so gracefully throughout the story that you wouldn't even notice if the visions painted for you weren't so horrific.

This book addressed some huge topics, racism and mental health being the most prominent. The story itself is interesting and catching, but i struggled to stay engaged throughout. I couldn't wait for the story to move along, and found some parts kind of stagnate.

This was an incredibly powerful read - I'm a huge fan of horror being used to explore real issues, and there's few narratives as real and as poignant as this one.

The prose is beautifully written - it felt like reading poetry and made everything feel dreamlike, intensely real and not real at the same time. There are moments that are truly terrifying and heartbreaking, but even the moments in between have this tension to them, which is mostly created by Cora's characterization and her inner narrative. Cora jumps off the page, fully realized and practically flesh and blood even as the impossible happens to her. Her anxiety and fear translates directly to the reader, which is a feat of writing unto itself.

I also really enjoyed how starkly realistic the plot is - it would have been easy for Baker to fall into common thriller tropes and turn Bat Eater into a trendy thrill ride, and we all would have enjoyed it. But this book is different - nothing is simple or as it seems, and nothing will be tied up in a neat bow of tropes and justice. We're instead left to stare into the mirror that Baker holds up to our reality, wondering how we got here and what might come next.

If you're looking for a book that is part slasher, part haunting, and part bio-horror, look no further. In the midst of the COVID pandemic of 2020, Cora Zeng is haunted by her deceased sister and stalked by a serial killer as everything in her clean and neat and somehow already spiraling life begins to fall even farther apart. The journey to finding her way back to some semblance of normal won't be easy and there will be blood. Fortunately, Cora is an expert on crime scene cleanup. Atmospheric urban horror at it's finest, this is one horror fans won't want to miss.

When I read the preview of this book, I knew I was gonna love this one. The audiobook was great. I enjoyed it more than I thought.
Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a haunting horror novel that weaves supernatural terror with the very real horrors of racism and violence against East Asians. Through Cora’s journey as a crime scene cleaner in Chinatown, the book explores the surge in anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, showing how fear, grief, and trauma manifest both psychologically and physically. As Cora uncovers eerie patterns in her work, the novel highlights the dehumanization and brutality faced by East Asian women, making the horror feel all too real. This book is both unsettling and deeply relevant.
4.5 stars

I realized this book isn’t for me as I was not able to finish. I won’t be able to give a full review and I won’t review on social sites as I wish the author the best pub day.

I love Kylie Lee Baker's books, and I think this is her best yet. Definitely the scariest. I finished this book in about a week, but it would have been shorter if I hadn't have needed to read during the daylight hours. Ha.

Overall, it was brilliant. Kylie seamlessly tackles issues of Asian hate, class, healthcare, and more while providing a story that is gripping as it is disturbing.

This book sucked me in immediately. It follows Cora Zeng in the early days of the COVID pandemic in New York City. She’s having to adjust to a new way of life when her world is completely upended once more. A man murders Cora’s sister Delilah right in front of her, pushing her in front of a train as he yells “bat eater.”

Kylie Lee Baker’s writing is so visceral. Some of the descriptions she employs are so disgustingly graphic, they really work to put you in Cora’s perspective and show how she’s coping (or not coping) with her situation. As Cora works as a crime scene cleaner she starts to realize that all the cases they’re getting are murdered East Asian women. Could this be connected to whoever killed her sister? And what are all those shapes that are coming out of the darkness, reaching out for Cora? Maybe she should’ve taken her aunt’s advice about the Hungry Ghost Festival more seriously…

This was such a wonderful blend of horror, character development, catharsis, social commentary, mental health, dark humor, family, and found family. I really enjoyed how the horror in this book was coming from multiple sources, some realistic and some supernatural. And the conclusion of the book felt very poignant. Definitely check this one out if it sounds interesting to you! I hope Kylie Lee Baker continues writing horror, she has a knack for it.

There is a moment near the closing of Bat Eater And Other Names For Cora Zeng where the title character stands on a New York City subway platform wearing two face masks. As Cora waits for her train, a man in a Yankees cap briskly brushes past her, sneers at her with distaste and calls her a “sheep”, presumably for “masking up” in the post-vaccine era of the Covid-19 pandemic. For anyone that followed any semblance of safety measures when the pandemic was the most pressing concern on most everyone’s mind, these kinds of interactions began to feel inevitable at a certain point as a growing population began to see the virus as more of a conspiracy to control citizens rather than a rampant worldwide health issue.

But at the point in Bat Eater when this specific interaction occurs, being called a “sheep” was almost a relief in comparison to the vile rhetoric that had been spewed at Cora and the violence that had been aimed at her since the beginning of 2020 as a young Chinese-American woman living in a version of New York City that is firmly planted in the early stages of the virus.

Bat Eater focuses on the story of Cora Zeng, a 24 year old woman born from a Chinese father and a white mother, both who abandon her at a young age to the care of various aunts and occasionally to the mother of her older sister, Delilah. Cora’s father snuck back to China after fathering two daughters in the States with two different women, leaving them to fend for themselves with monthly stipends that he sends each month from the warmth of his new home with his new family. Cora’s mother took off to join a cult disguised as a self-sufficient farming commune after declaring that being a mother to Cora was too difficult and too time-consuming.

After witnessing the death of her older sister at the dawn of the pandemic in a brutal hate crime in which she is shoved in front of a moving subway train after being needled by a strange man as a “bat eater”, Cora falls into the steady rhythm of a life in which she attempts to push away the memories of her connection and of her near blind devotion to her older sister. Her new apartment is small, empty of furniture and belongings and only serves to function as a place to sleep and to take scalding hot showers. While her new job working with a small crew doing crime scene clean-up in Chinatown both tantalizes and horrifies her germaphobic OCD nature.

With Delilah having previously been the north star that unwillingly guided her younger sister, Cora is now attempting to go through this new life purposely without having much of a life to show for it. She is propped up financially by both her Auntie Lois in exchange for visits to her aunt’s Christian-based church, as well as her Auntie Zeng who endlessly dabbles in what Cora writes off as ancient Chinese mysticism and only makes the effort to listen as her aunt is the only one willing to call her upon older brother, Cora’s father, to remind him to transfer money to support the daughter that he willingly abandoned. Having always been at the whims of everyone that was charged to raise her and either failed or hounded by them, Cora is left with no sense of who she really is or even who she wants to be.

She begins to notice little inconsistencies starting to occur, such as small food items missing from her apartment, fraying on the couch where there previously was none, even bite marks on the corner of her kitchen table that she knows are fresh. Having previously kept her two co-workers - the sarcastic, practical kleptomaniac Yifei and the gore-obsessed goofball Harvey - at arms-length, she hesitantly makes them aware of the sheer amount of recent, almost supernatural occurrences that are making her feel as if she is losing her mind. Half-expecting them to laugh off everything that she says, Cora is shocked when both Yifei and Harvey spring into action and rally around her without thinking twice.

In this midst of this thrown-together trio of friends working together to “fix” Cora, a disturbing trend begins to occur at their crime scene cleanups as all of the victims turn out to be young women of Asian descent that are all presented with some sort of bat motif - whether it be a live bat found shoved inside of a bathtub drain or a blood mural painted on the wall in the shape of a large bat. Paired with the earlier death of Cora’s sister, these bat-based coincidences become far too much to ignore and Cora and her co-workers descend into a mystery that is mired in spiritual folklore, racism and serial killers.

My only gripe with Kylie Lee Baker’s wonderful novel is that I would have loved to spend even more time with Cora, Yifei and Harvey as a trio. Their burgeoning friendship is one of the most enjoyable elements of this story as it brings to mind those sorts of circumstantial friendships that are only possible when you are thrown together into the muck of working with one another at a young age; a unique type of friendship that is often allowed to go deeper as it isn’t held back by the constraints of these new acquaintances knowing every sordid detail of your past. As the three friends begin to trust each other, their own horrifying, trauma-filled backgrounds open up wide and they all begin to understand that they might be more connected than they previously thought.

With Bat Eater, Kylie Lee Baker has accomplished a rare thing in modern writing as she has found a way to combine a deeply creepy mystical horror tale with a taught suspense thriller and lay those distinct pieces over the top of very real and very poignant commentary about the state of racism, prejudice and hate that continues to be rampant in the United States. It’s vitally important that we all learn to approach situations like a worldwide pandemic with open minds and are able to view them through the lenses of people whose experiences are far different and often far more dangerous than our own. Without that sense of being able to understand each other, we are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes that continue to divide us.

Thank you to MIRA Books, HarperCollins Publishers and NetGalley for the incredible opportunity to receive and review an advanced copy of a book that I will have on my mind for quite a while.

Whew. This was quite a ride.

I have a couple of questions about why the author chose to do certain things, but this is the kind of book where I feel like the author DID have reasons even if I'm not sure what they were. In other words, I have no overall critiques.. This book won't be for everyone (whew, that body horror tho), but the horror doesn't exist for its own sake. Baker is so clearly responding to the types of violence that is entrenched in our society. I shuddered at the ghosts and their grisly acts, but the things that made me flinch or exclaim aloud while reading were the acts of everyday violence that Baker describes.

I've been struggling to find horror books that are actually scary, and I think this one delivers. At the same time I spent most of the book feeling just... sad. As Baker says in the notes, we lost a lot in 2020, including the belief that strangers were generally good people. This hits even harder in 2025, when we're watching our government crumble before our eyes, while a significant portion of the population values the theoretical price of eggs over the lives of their neighbors.

This book features some interesting rep (undocumented immigrants, OCD, a reference to eating disorders) on top of the core theme of hate crimes perpetrated against the Asian-American community. It's well-written and I got attached to all the characters, sometimes to my detriment.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. It's one of the best horror novels that I've read in quite some time.

Horror isn't my usually genre, but this one caught my attention the moment a publisher presented this upcoming title. Set in NYC during the COVID shut down, using that time period to show how fear can metastasize into bigotry. Something that shouldn't be ignored or swept under the rug.

There are a lot of elements packed into this book. From supernatural horror to gore to serial killers, while also including Chinese lore throughout the novel. I listened to the audiobook while doing things such as eating dinner and walking my dogs (alone, and at night), both of which I have to say I do not recommend from the gore described while I was eating to thinking something may be luring in the shadows on my dog walks. I found myself quickly shuffling home. Like I said, horror isn't something I usually seek out, haha.

The element that surprised me to know that I enjoyed the most us that I wasn't sure whether Cora was a reliable narrator. It truly kept me guessing if everything was real or if she was just imagining things. There was a lot to unpack with Cora - from her trauma, PTSD from her sister's death, grief she hasn't really processed, her mental health, and her constant struggle with her bi-racial identity. This book balances a lot of layers between the horror and it did it well. With all of that, you find snarky banter and dark humor between Cora and her friends and this little found family she creates.

What I appreciated most is that it didn't shy away from some of the ugliest parts of society, such as systemic racism, racially motivated hate crimes, the fetishization of Asian women, police brutality, and media manipulation. Please take care to read the author's note at the end of the novel. It was beautifully said.

Auntie Zeng was probably my favorite character in this, especially the scene where she rolls up to the Taco Bell parking lot with her high beam brights, cabin lights on, and carrying multiple lanterns to get Cora. She's the real hero and never questioned Cora or expected her to be anything other than herself.

This book will make your skin crawl, gross you out, shock you, make you check behind dark corners, and make you angry for the characters in the book and in the Asian community as a whole. You may find yourself suddenly wondering if you should be burning mass amounts of joss paper and wearing jade jewelry.

I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I finished it. It is probably one that will stick with me for a while. Highly recommend, even if, like me, horror isn't a genre you normally gravitate to.

Thank you to Harlequin for both the digital and audio advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

this! book! was! so! good!

BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG is a haunting, multifaceted horror novel that was my perfect blend of thought-provoking themes and grotesque body horror. it had me hooked from start to finish, and natalie naudus truly brought this story to life. she is becoming one of my favorite narrators. i listened to the whole novel on my way home to visit family, and i never got bored or distracted.

BAT EATER evokes a variety of emotions like fear, disgust, sympathy, and awe. the story balances dark, suspenseful moments with horrifying, nasty body horror. there’s an unsettling sense of tension throughout, and the prose creates a vivid picture in your head.

what really elevated this book is its emotional depth. it’s not just about the fear or the grotesque imagery, but also the characters’ emotional journeys, especially cora's, which are raw and relatable.

given the setting, you can expect sharp social commentary. BAT EATER discusses a variety of pressing issues surrounding the covid pandemic, but also ranges from chinese culture and religion to racism, the fetishization of asian girls, trauma, and grief. these topics are seamlessly interwoven into the eerie narrative.

on top of all of that, the prose is absolutely STUNNING!! there is a beauty to the language that makes the horror feel immersive and poetic even in the most repulsive moments.

this is a book that will stick with you long after you finish it. it’s a perfect example of how horror can be used as a lens to explore complex human experiences and societal issues, while also delivering a chilling and satisfying narrative from the first page to the author's note.

The greatest horror of Bat Eater and Other Names For Cora Zeng is human ignorance.

Please don’t misunderstand. The author never missed a beat here, filling page after page with gore, terror, supernatural frights, and violent deaths. But at its heart, you’ll find that ignorance, and it will (hopefully) make you cringe more than the grossest details do (and this book is very gross!).

Kylie Lee Baker’s horror debut reminded me a lot of Grady Hendrix’s work. It’s campy horror brimming with social commentary, but those who’ve disliked Hendrix’s slow builds will be pleased to find that Baker thrusts readers straight into the action from the start. It’s highly entertaining in that respect, and full of heart.

I loved Cora, Harvey, and Yifei, and I felt a lot of emotions as I traveled through this story with them. I found them all to be uniquely developed and I miss spending time with them.

But it was the more profound aspects that really got me. Baker addresses discrimination, abandonment, low self worth, post traumatic stress, and violence toward minorities, all amidst the frightening COVID outbreak in the congested city of New York. It’s a packed novel, yet it never feels like too much, and the well timed comedic additions help balance out the heaviness.

I’ve been eyeing Baker’s fantasy books for a few years now, only procrastinating because that’s not a genre high on my list of exploration. I will, however, be jumping into one sooner than later now that I have seen how masterfully she weaves a story.

I am immensely grateful to Mira Books, Harlequin Audio, and NetGalley for my copies. All opinions are my own.

"Bat Eater & Other Names for Cora Zeng"
by Kylie Lee Baker
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Horror, meets folklore, meets magical realism at its finest! I absolutely devoured this book. Thank you so much @netgalley for the advanced reader copy. "Bat Eater" comes out on April 29th, 2025, and I highly recommend you pre-order this one or jump onto its library wait list.

SPOILER FREE REVIEW:

Cora can't always trust her brain. She struggles with OCD, intrusive thoughts, and her identity. After witnessing her sister's murder, a racism fuelled hate crime, Cora starts seeing hungry ghosts.

A hungry ghost is a supernatural being in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Chinese folk religion. They are beings who are tormented by intense emotional needs and extreme hunger and thirst.

Luckily, her two coworkers believe in what Cora is seeing, as her visions become more frequent, lurk in every shadow, and start to threaten her physically. The three crime scene cleaners become friends as they try to help Cora rid herself of what haunts her.

I loved the 3 main characters so much. They're very different people, but they find themselves caring for one another through the sad and scary circumstances that surround them. The pacing of the story is phenomenal. The writing takes the time to build anxiety and visuals, but it doesn't take away from how quickly things move. There's a beautiful balance between horror and stillness. I wanted to savor this reading experience, but it was hard to put the book down. The story also deals with racism and violence towards Asian women right from Chapter 1. The story and characters contain anger, and it's heartbreaking but powerful to read.

Overall Rating: 5 / 5 Stars

As someone who is not an avid horror reader, I am SHOCKED by how much I loved this – I’m so happy to have found my first 5-star read of 2025!

This story is set in New York City during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We follow Cora Zeng, a Chinese American woman grappling with the trauma of witnessing her sister's murder, a horrific event fueled by a racist attack. Forced to take a job as a crime scene cleaner to make ends meet, Cora discovers a disturbing pattern: the victims, often East Asian women, are frequently found near bat carcasses.

Cora starts to suspect a connection between these crime scenes and her sister’s death, leading Cora and her friends to begin investigating the potential connections. As the crew delves deeper into the mystery, the timing coincides with the Hungry Ghost Festival, a period when spirits can freely roam the earth. Through the investigation, Cora begins to experience supernatural forces that cause her to confront her own past trauma and unresolved issues.

This story masterfully blends elements of psychological horror, supernatural horror, and social commentary. It explores themes of racism, xenophobia, and the violence that Asian Americans faced during the pandemic. Bat Eater is more than just a horror story; it's a powerful exploration of grief, trauma, and the insidious ways in which prejudice can manifest in both the living and the spectral realms.

Huge thank you to HTP and the team at The Hive for sending both an eARC and audiobook for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

YEP THIS WAS GREAT. Definitely going to be on my top horror of 2025 list.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a horror/thriller set in early COVID days. The book opens with our Chinese American MC Cora witnessing her sisters murder on the subway in NYC after being called a 'bat eater' by her killer. She then becomes a crime scene cleanup person in the months following and notices too many asian women are being murdered.

This books really broaches the rampant asian hate crimes that have always occurred but really increased with the onset of COVID. It's something I don't feel like I heard enough about during the pandemic (also well illustrated in the book!) but I know it was occuring.

This is filled with amazing characters, some light found family/friendship, a serial killer on the loose, and lots of wild ghosts! There's a decent amount of really well written and creative gore and I could not put it down. I started and finished this in one day and I want more horror from this author in the future!

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the free digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

After her sister's brutal murder by subway train, Cora Zeng is alone and adrift. She takes up work as a crime scene cleaner, soon realizing a disturbing trend in the murder victims: they're all Asian women. The crimes are unspeakably violent and bizarre. At each crime scene, Cora discovers a mutilated bat and recalls the two words uttered by the man who killed her sister: bat eater. As the bodies start to pile up, Cora begins to unravel, obsessing more than ever about cleanliness and germs and takes refuge in her sanitized apartment. But she can't escape the feeling that someone or something is haunting her. Food goes missing, teeth marks appear in furniture. It's hungry ghost season, and Cora suspects her sister Delilah is not as dead as she once believed. Luckily, her two intrepid and eccentric coworkers are ready to help bust some ghosts.

Weaving together social commentary, Chinese mythology, grief, and identity, Kylie Lee Baker delivers a terrifying tour de force. The characters are compelling and delightfully quirky. Baker's elegiac prose creates a dark yet dreamy atmosphere in which we follow Cora's desperate search for answers. This is an un-put-downable read that will stir every emotion.

What a bloody, festering and sad book. I loved it.

Update: This was such a great story. I don't usually love Covid stories, but this is an exception. In the book we follow an American Asian named Cora during the first months of the pandemic in 2020. Her sister was recently killed (you'll find out how in the first chapter), and is a crime scene cleaner. The murderer was never found. What follows is a series of killings in Chinatown NYC, with the killer leaving bats at the scene of the murders in various, disturbing ways.

The book has a lot of depth, dealing with the rampant racism Asian people faced during the pandemic, and it deals with loss, grief, and indentity. The title fully encapsulates the story. Who is Cora in relation to her familial expectations? Who is she without her sister? Who is she when the world shuts down?

This book is creepy, and the pacing was great. I wasn't bored once, and I don't think any scenes here weren't important or uncessary. This book is, above all, sad. And it kept being sad all of the weay through. This didn't detract me from enjoying it. I think it was necessary. But when I think back on this book, the first word that comes to me is sad. This is, at it's core, still a horror novel with very creepy scenes.

This releases in the US at the end of April, and I definitely recommend picking it up when it releases. Thank you Harlequin Books and NetGalley for the e-arc. All opinions are my own.