"But Cora knows that the face of fear is not an abstract what-if. Fear is born in the after, when the world peels back its skin and shows you its raw, pulsing innards, when it forces you to remember its name. Anyone who has seen the face of fear knows you should damn well be afraid."

This story is set during the early stages of the Pandemic, when the end of the world looms over its inhabitants, and the future is spiralling into an unknown abyss.

You follow Cora, a Chinese American living in New York. Throughout this book you experience the horrors and autracities that take place to and around her. The story is harrowing. Within these pages I found myself, horrified, scared, surprised, chuckling, rooting for ghosts over humanity, sad, and inspired to be and do better.

This was arguably the best ghost story I've ever read and not because of the spooks and horrors which left me with full-body chills on multiple occasions but because of the powerful and descriptive prose used to deliver this bleak, yet inspiring story.

The story follows Cora Zeng, a 24-year-old biracial Chinese American woman working as a crime scene cleaner in New York City's Chinatown. Her life is upended when her sister, Delilah, is tragically pushed in front of a train, with the assailant uttering "bat eater" before fleeing. This event propels Cora into a harrowing journey where she confronts both real-world horrors and spectral manifestations. This novel delves into themes of grief and the pervasive racism faced by East Asians during the pandemic. This thought-provoking and chilling read offers a fresh perspective on horror, blending supernatural elements with a critical examination of societal issues.

Things I Liked:
Compelling Protagonist: Cora is a well-developed, complex character, and her struggle with grief, guilt, and racial prejudice feels both authentic and deeply human. Her emotional journey as she navigates her sister's death is raw and heartfelt, and her experiences with grief and guilt resonate deeply. As a biracial woman facing the weight of societal racism, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, her story is both personal and relatable.
Cultural Depth: The novel incorporates Chinese cultural elements, like the Hungry Ghost Festival, in ways that add depth and authenticity to the story. These cultural references aren't just background details but are integral to the plot and atmosphere, layering the horror with cultural significance.
Horror and Mystery Blend: The horror aspect of the book is intense and captivating. The supernatural elements are tied closely to Cora’s emotional journey, making them not only eerie but emotionally charged. The ghostly encounters and the dark mystery behind her sister's death kept me hooked. The balance between personal tragedy and the supernatural is skillfully handled, making the tension throughout the novel palatable.
Social Commentary: The novel doesn’t shy away from addressing the real-world issues of racism faced by Asian Americans, especially in light of the pandemic. The way Baker uses horror to explore these issues felt powerful and thought-provoking. It adds another layer to the horror beyond the spectral – showing how Cora’s identity influences her experience of violence and discrimination.

Things I Didn’t Like:
Pacing Issues: While the book had a lot of strong moments, there were parts where the pacing slowed down significantly. At times, the plot felt a bit meandering, especially during the middle sections, which detracted from the overall suspense. The momentum of the investigation could have been built up more effectively to keep the stakes high.
Supernatural Elements Were Underexplored: While I appreciated the supernatural aspects, particularly the ghosts and spirits tied to Cora’s emotions and her sister’s death, I felt that some of these elements could have been fleshed out more. I was left wanting a deeper exploration of the mythology and the ghosts that haunt Cora. There were moments when the book hinted at something larger and more complex, but it didn’t always deliver on that promise.
Lack of Closure: The ending, while emotionally charged, felt a bit ambiguous. Some plot threads that seemed important weren’t fully resolved, and while this can be effective in leaving readers to interpret the story themselves, it left me wanting more closure, especially around the mystery of Delilah's death and the identity of the attacker.

Conclusion:
Cora’s journey is one of pain, resilience, and discovery, making for an engaging read that stays with you long after you turn the last page. While there are a few pacing and plot development issues, the unique combination of horror and social commentary makes this novel stand out. If you're looking for a book that delivers both a chilling supernatural tale and a deep dive into grief and identity, Bat Eater is worth picking up.

A unique horror novel set during the pandemic. There was so much gore in this book at times it was a little unsettling. That being said, I loved this book. I think the author did a great job portraying grief, paranoia, racism, the early feelings of the pandemic. I hope Baker ventures into this genre more.

From its jolt of a beginning, I was immediately on board with Cora on her journey toward self actualization and the expression of her anger. I think this book is timely and is a must read for anyone trying to grapple with the current state of our society.

Thank you Netgalley! Most of this book is incredible, but I was pretty disappointed in the ending.

The good first of all the premise is really interesting. Cora is a really great and interesting character and I love how she’s written specifically in regard to her mental illness. I think it’s really cool to have a mentally ill main character in horror, but those characters are not usually handled with grace so it’s really nice to see. Her dynamic with her family and other characters was interesting and I loved her dynamic with Delilah. Beyond Cora, the creepy, gorey horror scenes are very well written and creepy.

The way the hungry ghosts were ultimately handled was AMAZING. I love how they ended up paralleling with Cora and her quest to find out who she is and where she fits into a Delilah-less world.

Now the bad…unfortunately boils down to the ending for me. The book is ultimately a commentary on racism being the real horror and I do really like that, but I don’t love the execution. The two major plot points were the serial killer and the hungry ghosts, and while they tie together, the serial killer plot line feels rushed. I love the ending twist that it’s not one person, but a group of copycats and how that ties in with the hungry ghosts, I just wish we could’ve had more time to digest it.

Now what I really didn’t like were Yifei and Harvey’s deaths. Neither of the deaths really felt…necessary. While that does end up tying back into the overarching theme it felt less profound and more disappointing. Harvey’s death in particular felt a little nonsensical in that he just so happens to be murdered as he figures out the whole thing with the serial killers. After his death, the book immediately just hits the gas on the plot and there’s barely any time to digest anything. While Yifei’s death makes more sense, we’re similarly given no time at all to digest that information before we’re thrown into something else. We could have gotten from Point A to the realizations at Point B without any of that happening…and then the fact that it happens doesn’t end of feeling that important. Despite the fact Cora apparently has serial killers still at large specifically targeting her she just continues to live normally like they just gave up because she killed the mayor and a story was released about them? It just feels unsatisfying and confusing.

This is still an amazing book, but I definitely think there was room for it to be even better.

5 Stars
Okay, this was really good, I was hesitant about the pandemic setting (because that was a traumatic time for everyone lol) but I love that it explored not only the fear of COVID-19 itself but the added horror on top of that to experience the pandemic as an Asian person and the racism that came along with it (which I could unfortunately, definitely relate to). Another read from Kylie Lee Baker to add to my favourites shelf - truly a great horror read with enjoyable characters and shocking twists.

Thank you NetGalley, Harlequin Audio, and Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA for the ARC!

Cora and Delilah have just scored a pack of toilet paper amidst the shortage at the beginning of COVID. While waiting at the subway station and talking about some future plans that Cora isn't too excited about, someone pushes her sister Delilah into the path of an oncoming train.

Cut to months later, Cora is using her arts degree during these "unprecedented times"—at best, as a crime scene cleaner. She is happy to be in a hazmat suit and protected against COVID, but there are other things she isn’t protected from—such as the fact that all the crime scenes she is cleaning are of Asian people, and it happens to be the Hungry Ghost Festival Month.

This book had everything: grief, gore, horror, and racism all meshed together in this 5-star read!

I don't normally enjoy reading about the early COVID days, as they were fucking traumatizing, but this book was so good that I couldn’t put it down!

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the eARC.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zheng was phenomenal. It's not only about the violence and hatred towards East Asians during the pandemic, it's also about choosing who we will become. As someone who experienced the way looks changed, the fear settling into my bones when I dared to go out, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zheng was always going to be emotional. It made my blood boil as it felt simultaneously in the 'past' and yet still too near. Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zheng begins with the idea of loss and solidifies into a world of hungry ghosts and voices screaming from the past.

This was an amazing ride!

This was my first pandemic-themed novel and I really enjoyed it.

As a Asian American, I could relate to this book a lot. I really enjoyed the authors use of applying Chinese traditions like: Qingming festival and the Ghost festival. I have celebrated Qingming, but I haven't heart of the Ghost festival before, so that made me do more digging into that. But, this book does talk about hate crimes against Chinese, but the author did note that racism does have to stop regardless of your race which I totally agree with.

About the book: Cora is a Chinese American who is a crime scene cleaner with two friends, and germaphobe during the pandemic. Her half sister Delilah is pushed in front of a train by a white man. After that, Cora thinks she is being haunted by her sisters hungry ghost., but is it?

This book was written well while including family, horror, racism, and some laughter.

Thank you NetGalley!

This was soooooo good! It was the perfect amount of horror, tension and reality. I flew through this book and it lived up to all of my expectations!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Dark, tense, grief filled, and not afraid of gore, this book had me totally invested, and I did not want to put it down! The height of the pandemic was the perfect setting to really highlight how horribly human nature can turn when fueled by fear and the unknown.
Serial m*rders, hungry ghosts, a lazy justice system, and a FMC just trying to keep order and sanity in a world that frightens, confuses, and rejects her, this books keeps hitting hard without overdoing.
I absolutely recommend everyone take this wild ride!

Thank you to @netgalley and @_mira_books_ for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

It has been a while since I stormed through a book in a single day the way that I devoured Kylie Lee Baker’s Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng. What a story! It starts with a bang and then veers off into a ghost story, a serial killer procedural, a coming of age tale, and a rumination of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not for the easily triggered or faint of heart: there is a lot of blood and gore. Cora is at times the most infuriating of protagonists; however, by the end of the book, she had me charmed. Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for allowing me an ARC in return for my honest review.

This book is absolutely thrilling gore filled horror story with something to say. The social commentary paired with a riveting plot kept me fully invested throughout. I never knew where this story was going and it really kept me on my toes.

This book is hauntingly dark, gut wrenching, intense, fast paced and yet had moments of humor that I would catch me off guard and I appreciated that. Cora Zeng is a badass FMC and I loved her. This is one of those books that feels so close to 5 stars and maybe as I sit with it more it could be one, but for the time being I rate it 4.75 stars

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy!!! A properly terrifying book. That's really all that needs to be said about it. That's how good this is.

Cora Zeng's life is not going as planned. Amidst a global pandemic, her sister is thrown in front of a train right before her eyes. Her compulsive need to clean ramps up after she begins cleaning up crime scenes. Cora struggles with the loss of her sister and the hatred she faces as a Chinese American. When dead bats begin to make an appearance at the crime scenes she's cleaning, Cora will be unable to ignore the problems she's been hiding away.

This is a dark book right out of the gate, lots of grim topics are discussed at length. Not only is this story haunting, it will stick with you for quite some time after. Thank you Netgalley for the advanced copy of this book.

Oh yeah, that's the good stuff.

Cora Zeng is used to following her sister Delilah's every whim; after all, she doesn't have much of a life plan herself. But during the rising hate of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cora's life is ripped apart when her sister is brutally killed one day. The parting words of the killer: "Bat Eater". Months later, Cora's job as a crime-scene cleaner sheds light on a disturbing pattern of deaths in New York's Chinatown. The scenes that Cora cleans all seem to be Asian women who have been murdered brutally, and the killer's calling card appears to be the bodies of mutilated bats left at the scene. As Ghost Month approaches and Cora's family prepares for spirits to rise from Hell back to the world of the living, Cora feels danger closing in from all sides.

So, first of all, this book was 0% on my radar before I received my copy in the January 2025 Evernight box. I love me a good horror with social commentary, so I immediately requested to audio on Netgalley and started listening. 24 hours later and I'm sitting here breathless after finishing up the last chapter.

First, characters. The next time someone starts with the "I can't relate to the character if they don't look like me!" bullshit I am going to create a giant neon sign that points straight at Cora Zeng. While Cora's more extreme OCD behavior and social anxiety might not resonate with everyone, I think we can all absolutely relate to being young and wondering what you're going to do with your life. Bonus points for the fact that she's living through the pandemic, which feels like it is crushing all of her aspirations. Been there. On top of all that, Cora is just earnestly trying to do her best to get through every day. Even now, approaching the 5-year anniversary of the start of the pandemic, I can very much say that I am sick and tired of living through unprecedented times and sometimes it's really all I can do to get through one day and wake up to face another. Cora really embodies that with her rigid schedule and need for control over her environments in a world where she really doesn't have much control over anything else.

The story of this book is just as stand-out as our characters. It has social commentary. It has cultural traditions. It has terrifying paranormal creatures that will keep you up at night. Bat Eater is the first book I have read this year that made me want to sleep with the lights on. I usually listen to audiobooks while I am falling asleep, but I absolutely refused to turn this on while I was in the dark. The descriptions of the creatures haunting Cora and her friends made by spine tingle and had to be brought back only when the sun was high in the sky again.

Ghosts, though, aren't the only horror in Bat Eater. As I said at the start of the review, this book focuses heavily on the anti-Asian hate that sprouted during the pandemic, highlighting both the gruesome and the benign ways that Asian peoples were targeted in America during COVID-19. This focus in the driving force of the book and for that reason, I am not going to analyze it too deeply here - go and read it for yourself if you want more detail. But suffice it to say that this extremely nuanced commentary is laced up beautifully with the horror elements of this book, putting it right next to Jordan Peele's Get Out in its quality.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng comes out on April 29th, and I can't wait to recommend it to every horror-lover I know. This will definitely be going down as one of the best horror releases of the year.

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a dark and gruesome look into Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. It follows Cora, a crime scene cleaner living in Chinatown NYC who witnessed her sister’s murder by an unidentified white man. When Cora is called to more and more crime scenes for brutally murdered Asian women, she realizes something sinister is going on and no one seems to be acknowledging it.

This is definitely not for the faint of heart - it’s gory and brutal and uncomfortable, but also a very powerful and eye opening social commentary. This also has paranormal aspects in the form of hungry ghosts which adds another layer of spookiness. It’s a quick & suspenseful read that I would recommend not only to anyone looking for a gripping horror story, but also to anyone interested in learning more about the Asian experience during the pandemic.

Thank you to Harlequin Trade Publishing for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this story it was real, and raw, and haunting. Cora was such a beautifully flawed character. From her obsession with germs, cleanliness and avoiding covid, to her traumas from family and the violence inflicted on her and those around her as well as her struggle to figure out exactly where she "fits." This book is everything- EVERYTHING! There's mystery, covid horror, slow-burn ghostly paranormal horror- with some truly horrific imagery, a horror revealing of darkest parts of humanity and exposing the rampant racism that's still so prevalent today. This book is beautifully written and will stay with me forever. I honestly can't wait to read it again.


Natalie Naudus was the *perfect* narrator for the audio of this book. They really brought the story and horrors to life in a way that wast haunting and chilling. I connected to their narration immediately and couldn't seem to turn the book off.

BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG [#gifted @hivebooks @htpbooks | Out April 29]

"Harvey's uncle owns a dry-cleaning shop in Chinatown that expanded into crime scene cleanup, since hardly anyone needs their dry cleaning done during a pandemic, but a surprising number of people need brains scrubbed off their walls and even cheapskate families don't like doing that kind of thing themselves."

Haunting. Raw. Important. Award-Worthy. Like the title, this book is in your face and demands your attention. It’s a multi-layered story anchored by the racism, terror and anger directed toward Asian people during COVID. It’s a story about how to survive and belong in the face of hatred. This book will consume you while revealing the ugliest parts of humanity.

Cora is battling the grief of her sister’s tragic death while trying to stay sane and healthy in a pandemic-era world. She gets a job as a crime scene cleaner and quickly pieces together that there’s a serial killer targeting Asian people, leaving bats behind at every scene. Cora and her co-workers race to find the killer to bring closure for her sister and the victims.

I usually don’t read books about COVID because I don’t want to relive that period. However, the racism and dangerous narrative placed upon Asian people during that time is critical to acknowledge. It should make you uncomfortable and it should light a fire under your ass to speak up and stop hate. Much of this story was sadly too-on-the-nail for how it really is out there and the author demands attention to these problems. They didn’t shy away from gore and I’ll likely be haunted by many scenes from this book forever. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work crime scene cleanup, this gives you a front row seat. I enjoyed Cora’s internal dialogue and how cultural beliefs and ghosts play an important role in the story.

Thanks Hive Books for the opportunity to read a digital ARC of this story. It was one without a doubt one of the strongest books I’ve ever read. There's a new voice in horror and you've solidified me as a fan.

As someone who doesn’t typically read horror and is very easily scared, I am happy to say that I really enjoyed this book. Most of the scary stuff comes in the form of paranormal activity and gore/serial killers. The story itself was so interesting and held so many pieces of Chinese spiritualism (I hope I phrased that correctly) paired with these horror elements rooted in racism, violence, and the rejection of the self. Seeing Cora come full circle to accept herself and her heritage was so wonderfully done. Pacing and plotting were right on the money for me and the ending was a nice, peaceful end to a story that otherwise had me on the edge of my seat. This makes me want to read this author’s backlist.