Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker: Review, characters, triggers, more
Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker synopsis/summary:
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.
Get Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker here.
Bat Eater characters.
Cora Zeng is a deeply layered and troubled crime scene cleaner, and the narrative style reflects her inner turmoil perfectly. Told in a third-person stream of consciousness, the story pulls us straight into her mind, immersing us in her raw emotions and fractured thoughts.
Here is the full list of characters in Bat Eater:
Coraline ‘Cora’ Zeng
Delilah Zeng
Auntie Zeng
Auntie Lois
Harvey Chen
Yifei Liu
Devin McSomething
Father Thomas
Ryan
Paisley
Yuxi He
Bat Eater: Book review.
My rating: ★★★★★
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 creep you out, make you squirm, shock, 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, bloody 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.
View my Bat Eater book review on GoodReads here!
Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker book FAQs.
SPOILER ALERT:
Some answers may spoil Bat Eater if you haven’t read it already. Proceed with caution.
What are the content & trigger warnings for Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker?
Blood and gore
Bigotry, racism
Grief
Trauma
Body horror
Death
Child abandonment and neglect
Mental illness
Animal cruelty, deaths and corpses
Supernatural horror: Ghosts
What is Bat Eater’s age rating?
Bat Eater by Kylie Lee Baker is rated for readers aged 18+ containing adult themes, graphic blood, gore, violence and other content warnings.
I LOVED Bat Eater! What other books should I read that are similar?
If you’re into horror served with a side of sharp social commentary and wit, The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim is a must-read. Pair it with anything by Stephen Graham Jones, Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, or Grady Hendrix’s latest, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, for a lineup that’s as clever as it is chilling.
For a more literary twist that’s unapologetically meta and skewers cultural appropriation (along with the publishing industry’s other racial blind spots), don’t miss R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface. It’s biting, brilliant, and bound to make you squirm in the best way.
Enjoyed reading Bat Eater & Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker? You may also enjoy reading:
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Grave Empire by Richard Swan
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes | Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
