Bat Eater has officially put Kylie Lee Baker on my auto-buy auther list! I loved her YA <i>Keeper of Time</i> duology with hints of gore and brutality seeping through, but this adult horror debut is where her writing style and sense of feminine rage really shines. A perfect combination of horror, Chinese lore, and emotion.

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.

"I didn't come to America by myself when I was fifteen just to end up gutted in my own bed with a bat shoved down my throat. I am not going to be one of those bodies that we have to scrape off the ceiling, okay?"

To call this book a mystery or a thriller feels like an insult. This is a novel about rage. The violence is unflinching and the depiction of racial violence against women is unrelenting.

Set in New York during the height of the COVID19 Lockdown, Cora is a crime scene cleaner and isn't dealing emotionally with the murder of her sister. As the crime scenes get bloodier and more disfigured bats are found in walls or in the stomachs of murdered girls, it soon becomes clear to Cora and her co-workers that a serial killer is targeting South Asian women. Additionally, the month of Hungry Ghosts is upon her and she keeps ignoring her aunty's advice to burn offerings to the dead.

Initially I thought this was going to be a thriller about a woman tracking down a serial killer and also be a social commentary on anti-Asian (particularly Anti-South Asian) racism that arose during COVID. However, this was so much more than that. It is not the crime mystery, it is a sickening, rage inducing horror novel about how Asian women are seen as disposable objects in the Western world. It is about how they are expected to be silent, submissive sex dolls who never look white men in the eye or complain. The added component of sexual violence or implied sexual violence made it even more horrifying.

Part of me would like to think that some of violence the women are subjected to is unrealistic, but I live in Australia where a woman is killed once a week (and indigenous women's' names are not even mentioned in news reports!!). In France we just saw Gisèle Pelicot face down her rapists in court. There is a website filled with over 40,000 men boasting about how they've assaulted their partners. Kylie Lee Baker pulls on wider misogynistic violence and zones in on the violence against South Asian women and how that intensified during lockdown. It is depressing to read, but my discomfort is nothing.

I haven't even touched upon the inclusion of folklore and the presence of Hungry Ghosts, but what else can I say? The ghosts are here and they are hungry .

Thank you to Netgalley and Holder & Stoughton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't know what to expect going into this as I like to go into books without reading too much about them, and I knew from the cover and title this was going to be great, but wow this was wild! From the first chapter I was hooked! This book is addictive and shocking in the best way, but is certainly not for the faint of heart as it is quite gory so know that before going into it.

Spooky horror at it's finest!

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I enjoy horror, I don’t mind gore, but this was too much for me, from the second chapter all I could focus on was how nauseated I felt. (The bath drain was just too much for me haha) and I sadly had to DNF.

With that said, the prose is chilling, the existential dread of Cora is well and truly unsettling. It is well written, it was just the very in depth descriptions of the gore in the crime scenes was too much for me.

This book is such a perfect entrance for Baker's adult novel career. I absolutely loved the layers this story had.
It was gruesome, it was ghostly, it was perfection.
I would read this authors grocery list.

🚨 NEW RELEASE REVIEW - JAN 2025 🚨

📖 Bat Eater by @kylieleebaker

Oh my god, this book was flipping crazy from start to end! I picked it up because of the title, I wanted to read more diversely and wow! We love a thriller horror with a sprinkle of dry humour ☠️

If you want to know what it was like living as an Asian during the start of the pandemic, this is it. But tie it up with a cereal killa on the loose and no ongoing investigation, each page had me wondering whodidittttttt.

Bat Eater follows Cora, a crime scene cleaner, it’s heavy on Chinese superstitions, QingMing festival (honouring the deceased), hungry ghosts, burning joss paper, the riggor mortis jumping vampire zombies - all the ghost stories I grew up with, was packed in this book and I couldn’t stop reading.

I was so sure it was going to be a certain character “that did it” but I was completely wrong.

& THAT LAUNDROMAT SCENE OMFG

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you @hachetteaus for the ARC via @netgalley. All opinions are my own.

I really wish we could give half stars here - because I would rate this book 3.5.

It's hard to work out how to describe Bat Eater. It is part body horror, part murder mystery, part social commentary and part folklore. Each part exists independently AND in cohesion with the others in a way that makes total sense and no sense at all.

Cora is a crime scene cleaner, but when she witnesses the murder of her sister in a subway station her whole life changes. Torn between the real and the perceived, Cora is immersed in the horror of the hungry ghosts who need vengeance for their deaths.

At times I couldn't work out what was actually happening in this book, and what might have been imagined by Cora. I found the majority of the novel very interesting, though, and learnt a bit about Chinese Folklore.

I only didn't rate it higher as I don't think I would recommend it to other people unless I knew them very well. You can never tell whether people are going to be scared or grossed out!!

4.5 brilliant blood-soaked stars

**Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.**

Some gorgeous creepy quotes I loved

"Violent deaths leave unsettled ghosts."

"Maybe she wants someone to teach her how to be a human the correct way, the way she never learned. Someone to wake her up and tell her what to eat, what to dream about, what to cry about, who to pray to. Because Cora somehow feels that every choice she's made has been wrong, that every choice she will ever make will lead her deeper and deeper into a life that feels like a dark, airless box, and when she peers through the slats in the wood she'll see the pale light of who she might have been, so bright that it blinds her."

"Cora Zeng does not get angry because anger always melts through her fingers until it is a pool of anguish under her feet. There is not enough oxygen inside Cora to keep anger burning. No matter how hard she tries, she can only wield her sharpest thoughts against her own flesh... Anger is just one of those thoughts that can never quite sink its teeth into her--she is not solid enough, and its jaws close around nothing at all."

"The Delilah of Cora's imagination has no face, just an egg-smooth expanse of pale skin because faces are the hardest to remember, and Delilah has long been rotting in Cora's mind."

"Something about darkness feels so expansive these days. Like the world only opens its eyes after the sun sets."

"Closing your eyes doesn't stop monsters from devouring you."

"A shiver rips through Cora's blood. She feels that there is an entire universe just behind her, but she's not allowed to look."

Basics
+ author: she/her, BIPOC (Japanese, Chinese, & Irish heritage), USA
+ genre: literary fiction, horror
+ themes: loss & grief, unmoored early adulthood, Chinese-American experience, remorse
+ vibes: sad, mournful, darkly funny, raw, haunting
+ setting: 2020-2021 NYC

Pros
+ visceral, beautiful writing style which reminds me of Otessa Moshfegh
+ MC is a crime-scene cleaner so there is a ton of body horror, gore, guts and blood
+ summer ghost festival gone awry
+ Chinese funeral & ghost ceremonies & customs (burn the joss paper DEAR GOD 🔥)
+ creature feature
+ family crypt heebie-jeebies
+ anxious thought spirals and deliciously intrusive thoughts
+ THE WRITING IS SO FREAKING GOOD. Everything is normal for a page (well, normal for her... gore clean up, crypt sweeping, ghost offerings) then she'll have thought spirals or intrusive thoughts or negative self-talk and BOOM the author has these 1-2 lines every page or so that are so dark AND beautiful that I'm just amazed. Phenomenal writing 🤌
+ one scene reminded me so much of a No Face scene in Spirited Away (in a much more gruesome way)
+ This is one of the only books to truly send LITERAL chills down my spine. I got goosebumps. After the crypt scene then tunnel scene I freaked out going to the bathroom at night. 👻😱

Cons
- I wished all perpetrators had been served justice (I do understand the realistic approach, but c'mon, it's so bloody and fantastical already! Please kill them, I'm begging 🙏)
- felt like the author pulled the final big punch at the end (still a great ending but not as phenomenal as I was expecting)

TW: witnessing a murder, death of a sibling, gore, thinking about ways to die/people died, dead bats, animal harm, grief, germ-based OCD, COVID-19, xenophobia, racism, hate crimes, mental health, stay in a mental health facility (referenced), death a million different ways, car accident, house fire, home invasion, serial killer

This was fantastic. Cora is a crime scene cleaner whose sister dies in a tragic not-so accident. Drowning in grief and survivor’s guilt, Cora is torn between dual identities and struggles to find the means to feed her sister’s ravenous spirit who haunts her every step.

Baker uses gore and shadows to emphasise the very real horror of the bigotry that accompanied the height of covid all told via an unsettling combo deal of serial killer thriller meets chilling ghost haunt.

I am a pretty avid horror fan but there were moments while reading this late at night that I had to set the book down and read something light just to balance it out. It was visceral, heart-rending and I suspect, the only covid novel I will ever love.

If you’re only going to read one horror novel this year, make it this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette AUNZ for an arc copy of this book.

4.5 rounded up to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My first read for 2025 and what a book it was.

Bat Eater tells the tale of Cora Zheng, a half-Chinese girl living in NYC in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and shines a bright light on the anti-Asian hate that many people experienced during the pandemic.


The story starts pretty early with the horror and graphic details so if this is not something you enjoy, I wouldn’t pick this book up.

But the loss of her sister starts a string of events leading Cora to be caught up in a string of murders of Asian- American women by an alleged serial killer who is purposely seeking them out.

As Cora navigates her grief, her beliefs and her new life alone in NYC, she is also suddenly being haunted by a presence that makes her question everything and ultimately sends on a search for closure and ultimately unmasking the perpetrator - which turns out to be a lot more complex than she first thought.

This book is shocking, scary but most importantly highlights the horrifying nature of people who create narratives out of fear during a time where we should’ve been banding together.

Although I don’t live in the USA, I do live in Australia and as a south-Asian woman, saw many similar comments and hate being spread both online and in person during the pandemic, especially towards Asian people.

The scariest part is that these people exist and walk amongst us every day.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I wasn’t sure what to expect initially for a pandemic-based horror novel but I was most pleasantly surprised.

I loved this book. It’s gory as hell and creepy to boot, but it’s also a fascinating look at how the Covid19 pandemic brought out the worst in people, and how Asian women suffered most at the xenophobia that seemed to be worldwide at the time (and, let’s be honest, all the time here in Australia).

This is a horror novel, so be warned the first chapter will make you shudder. It’s also a ghost story, and a family story and a story of a woman trying to be someone - anyone!

I really loved this, although after several nightmares I stopped reading it at night time. Thanks to @netgalley and @hachetteaus (or @grandcentralpub? I heard they were changing over but I have no idea) for early access, this is a great pick for January.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’m not really sure where to start with this book except that it is honestly brilliant and it started 2025 off so strong. I got recommended this from a friend that spoke so highly of it and I’m so glad I read it so soon. It follows the story of Cora, a half- Chinese girl living in NYC during the COVID pandemic. She’s gone through the worst kind of trauma, is unsure of herself and her role in the world, is navigating between two cultures she feels she doesn’t belong to and starts seeing things she can’t trust to know if is real or not.
She starts working as a crime scene cleaner and tries to uncover the mystery behind bats being left behind at crime scenes of Chinese women who are brutally murdered.
This is such an amazing horror and paranormal debut. It’s gorey, terrifying, descriptive and has many elements of Chinese Folklore and superstitions. The first chapter sucks you in straight away and I cannot warn you how it immediately drags you in. I can’t praise this book highly enough.

This book will horrify you. Both in the level of detailed violence and the stark social commentary of what life post pandemic has done to us as humans.

Bat eater is set during the height of COVID in New York city and follows the story of Cora Zeng. After witnessing her sisters death (think Hereditary and the electricity pole scene, you know what I'm talking about ☠️) Cora takes a job as a crime scene cleaner while a serial killer is at work murdering young Asian women and hungry ghosts are chewing on the legs of her coffee table.

I was sucked into this story from the very first page. There is A LOT of graphic gore in this book, all the way through, so if that's not your jam then this probably isn't the book for you. The commentary on the absolutely horrific mentality of the larger population during COVID and the absolute worst traits that it brought out in everyone will make you equally as uncomfortable as the gore. But its important and gives a stark insight into just how horrible we as humans can be.

I love that the ghost element was woven into this story through traditional Chinese cultural lore with the hungry ghosts. The representation of dealing with grief, abandonment, trauma and mental health issues is also layered seamlessly into the story.

Everything about this story is amazing and pulled together beautifully with witty banter to balance out the horror. It will grip you from the first page and hold on long after you've turned the final page. Everyone should read this book.

Just make sure you do it with the lights on.

Why did I pick this book? Because of the title!
Trigger warning: gory details -is not for the squeamish and the faint-hearted

This book brought up what people with Chinese backgrounds experienced during the covid19 pandemic as it has somehow become common knowledge that all Chinese people eat bats just to start the plague. The first chapter itself is very impactful, so I totally flew through this book. Setting in New York City, we follow Cora's traumatic experience when her older sister, Delilah, was pushed in front of a train. And she never forgets that the murderer spitted out two words before leaving the scene: Bat Eaters.
Working as a crime scene cleaner, Cora noticed that the Asian women are kind of being mass-murdered. However, there is no real interest from police to investigate because who cares if another Chinese girl is dead.
"I want every person in this whole city to keep their lights on and look for this a***ole, to lock their doors and buy those handguns that you Americans love because I am tired of scrubbing Asian women off the walls".
As the hungry ghosts month arriving, a ghost resembling Delilah begins to follow her.

I love all the characters in this book, the dark atmosphere, and I think this is such an amazing, unique read that has to be experienced.

I usually avoid pandemic-themed novels like I avoid group chats with 47 unread messages, but Bat Eater is the rare exception. It uses that time as a lens to explore how fear metastasises into bigotry, laying bare the ugliest parts of humanity that fester beneath the surface, waiting for a moment of collective vulnerability to erupt.

As a brown girl born in Australia to South Asian immigrant parents, my lived experience isn’t quite the same as the Asian-American context Baker delves into. Still, racism wears many faces and has an exhausting universal familiarity. But my friend Mai, who lives in the U.S., penned a review that’s a must-read.

Now, let’s get to the blood, guts and ghosts. Bat Eater kinda gives if The Ring or The Grudge had a love child with a blood-soaked thriller and it’s as haunting as it is gory. From page one, where Cora Zeng's sister, Delilah’s head meets a train (yep, we’re starting strong), the story ramps up with spine-tingling intensity and literal viscera. Cora Zeng’s job as a dry cleaner-turned-corpse-cleaner has her scraping Asian-American women off surfaces, and it’s only Wednesday. Workplace woes, am I right? But also, there seems to be a serial killer targeting a specific racial group and leaving bat corpses as their grotesque calling card.

It’s not just gore, either. We've got supernatural horror that’ll have you peeking through your fingers and rethinking that creak you heard in the next room. It's steeped in Chinese cultural lore, drawing on Zhong Yuan Jie (中元节), or the Hungry Ghost Festival. I made the mistake of reading it at night, and let’s just say my advice is to read this in the sunlight, preferably surrounded by people who can confirm nothing supernatural is crawling out of your TV or the shadows.

What truly sets Bat Eater apart is how deftly it balances its many layers. Cora’s battles extend beyond hungry ghosts and cleaning brain goo. She also grapples with trauma, abandonment issues courtesy of absentee parents, grief, her mental health and a relentless struggle with her identity. However, there was also lightness to balance the darkness, with found family vibes and zippy banter which added a layer of warmth and dark humour.

But perhaps Bat Eater’s most remarkable achievement is its seamless weaving of horror with incisive social commentary. It's full of uncomfortable truths: the fetishisation of Asian women, the sharp sting of systemic racism, racially motivated hate crimes, police brutality, media manipulation and copaganda. It will shock, creep you out, make you squirm, entertain, provoke and possibly make you feel the need to wear a jade bangle and burn a small mountain of joss paper.

It might be premature to crown Bat Eater my favourite book of 2025 (ask me again in December 2025), but the bar has been set high.

Five gory, blood-spattered stars. Thank you to NetGalley & Hachette AU & NZ for fuelling my nightmares in exchange for an honest review. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.

PS. Mind your triggers! Besides the obvious ones, another one to be mindful of is animal cruelty and animal corpses.

When our main gal Cora, becomes invested in the occurrence of so called Bat Eater murder cases, she quickly realises that familial warnings around Ghost Month are truly something to be on the lookout for...

Cora is as sceptical as they come. She doesn't listen to her family (mostly), has always been the black sheep and only recently has realised that her sisters tragic death (thanks to some rather unfortunate circumstances, and one very racist man) affect her far more than she's realised.

At times, Bat Eater is a novel about losing a loved one, at other times it shows the power of friendship (and the finding of it in the most unlikely of places). It is a book about tradition and superstition and wanting to break free, but also realising that you are already as free as you've always wanted, and are just too scared to admit it. It pulls at the heart strings, all while transporting you back to the throes of the end of the world.

The way the first chapter of this book hooked me was unreal.

It wasn’t what I expected at all. It’s a COVID story from a perspective that absolutely breaks your heart. Following Cora after he sister is murdered, she realises that a series of unexplained killings in Chinatown, that someone might be targeting East Asian women, and something might be targeting Cora herself.

The Hungry Ghost was a touch that usually wouldn’t be my style but I did really enjoyed reading this book!

If you read one book based on my recommendations make it Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker.
I loved everything about this book- the writing, the story, the tone, the pace, the vibe.
I loved that not only is it a spectacularly gory ghost story but, like all good horror novels, it was so much more than that-
A criticism on anti-Asian sentiment brought on by the Covid response. An examination of racism and sexism. A story of grief and coping. A tale of finding oneself.
Loved it and I need to go and read Baker’s backlist as soon as possible.

wow! as someone who doesn’t usually read horror I was blown away by this book. from the first chapter I could not put this book down. the story was thrilling, horrifying, funny at times, anxiety inducing and somewhat heartwarming at times. the racism in this story seemed heartbreakingly accurate to the experience of Asian people in America during the pandemic. I loved all three of the main characters Cora, Yifei and Harvey and how their relationship develops from coworkers to close friends - this friendship development was done perfectly. I will say please look up trigger warnings for this book, as it does include racial violence, and quite gory descriptions. thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Australia and New Zealand for a digital ARC! definitely check this out when it is released on Jan 14 2025!