Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

Unique and timely. This is a good one!

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Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker

Released January 2025

Source: Purchased @ Aardvark Book Club

Get it at your local library or see more @ Goodreads

A little mystery, a little tragedy and a whole lot of horrors await a small group of crime scene cleaners as they wield their way through the early days of the Covid pandemic. A world that often feels overtaken by hatefulness and prejudice.

As of this day (sometime in November of 2025), we are still dealing with Covid mutations and all of the mess and selfishness it has wrought out into the open, so I was a little wary of reading a novel about a time that still feels like a festering open wound. I feared it would be too depressing and turns out it was but yet it really wasn't, and I credit that to the storytelling and characterization.

Cora Zeng is the main character and she's lonely and closed off and dealing with trauma but as the story moves along finds herself begrudgingly becoming friends with the co-workers she had always kept herself distanced from as they join forces to become amateur sleuths after cleaning up several crime scenes with a weird commonality. Loved that.

It's a bit heartbreaking and bleak and, of course, some people are disgustingly hateful but somehow the book never feels despairingly heavy. I enjoyed it so much more than expected (I read it for a book group chat) though I don't think "enjoy" is the appropriate word here as it's an upsetting and gory read but I am glad I didn't let it sit around unread for years. It read like a modern-day horror movie that gets the balance of heart and chills just right.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Publisher Plot Synopsis 

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. The bloody messes don't bother her, not when she's already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister being pushed in front of a train.

Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater.

Months pass, the killer is never caught, and Cora can barely keep herself together. She pushes away all feelings, disregards the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, and won't take her aunt's advice to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open.

Cora tries to ignore the rising dread in her stomach, even when she and her weird co-workers begin finding bat carcasses at their crime scene clean-ups. But Cora can't ignore the fact that all their recent clean-ups have been the bodies of East Asian women.

Soon Cora will learn: you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.