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It’s a good problem to have, but I can’t seem to nail down my Favorite Reads of the Year list because I keep reading such amazing horror novels, well into December! 

The latest disruption to my ongoing mental tally is Kylie Lee Baker’s BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG, a book that isn’t just one of my favorite reads of the year, but truly one of the best horror novels I’ve ever read. 

I’ve had a copy of Baker’s YA fantasy novel, THE KEEPER OF THE NIGHT for a few years, but I just hadn’t gotten around to it. So BAT EATER is my first experience with her writing & I’m totally blown away by this book.

The book takes place in New York City at the very height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the vicious & rampant anti-Asian racism that took place at the center of the entire story. 

When we first meet Cora Zeng, she’s waiting in a subway station with her sister, Delilah. They’re actually half-sisters, and that’s important to the story, but they’re extremely close and live together, and so the “half-sister” designation doesn’t carry any kind of negative/distant connotation; they’re sisters. 

The opening chapter of the book is shocking & sickening, with Delilah being pushed into an oncoming train by a man who utters just two words: “bat eater.”

The story picks back up four months later, in August of 2020. Cora has found work cleaning up crime scenes along with two other people, Harvey Chen and Yifei. 

They don’t see the bodies, they just clean up the mess. It’s fucking gnarly work, and Baker leans into just how strange and grotesque this job really is, especially during a pandemic. Cora is somehow both uniquely suited to this work & also totally in over her head. Because on the one hand, Cora really loves to clean. 

But on the other, she’s written as someone with an extreme amount of germaphobic tendencies. I don’t believe it’s ever said outright if Cora has OCD, but it feels that way for much of the book. And yet, here she is, in the middle of a pandemic, in her hazmat suit, picking brain matter & skull fragments out of tile walls. 

Even though they don’t see the bodies, they know who the victims are, and it doesn’t take long for them to realize that the victims are all Asian women. And then there are the bats left at the scenes, in various disgusting ways. 

There’s a serial killer targeting Asian women in the middle of a pandemic. 

And oh, Cora is also being haunted by Delilah’s ghost. 

That’s…sort of as much of the plot as I think I really need to explain here.  

When I sit here and think about BAT EATER, I’m just constantly struck by the range of emotions I felt reading the book. This is a horror novel that confronts the violence of racism in as direct a way as possible, and it is very hard to stomach. The grief, the rage, the way Cora and her two friends are constantly othered. It’s fucking brutal to read.

And at the same time that this book takes an unflinching look at racism & hatred, this story is also really fun. Which feels kind of odd to say, but authors are in the entertainment business, so there it is. The book is wildly entertaining, spooky as hell, and totally unpredictable. And like all great horror novels, BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG succeeds because you care deeply for the characters.  Cora and her two friends are all funny & weird, and the group dynamics are just fascinating. Even Harvey, who can be super fucking annoying, won me over in the end. 

Cora is such a lovingly portrayed human being. She is broken, literally haunted, and utterly wrecked by grief. She is struggling with serious mental health issues, and now she’s completely in over her head attempting to track down a serial killer in New York City. She is going through a lot & I just found her to be one of the most compelling protagonists I’ve met in a long time. 

BAT EATER is so atmospheric & feels like a love/hate letter to New York City in many ways. While it’s Cora’s home, it becomes an increasingly hostile environment. But you really feel the city seeping in around you as you read, and I think Baker is a master at setting a scene. 

I’m often mentioning how much I’m always chasing the high that I get from stories that blend horror and crime with the deftness seen in “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven” and I think BAT EATER AND OTHER NAMES FOR CORA ZENG 100% belongs in that conversation. This book is emotional & deeply upsetting. It’s also thrilling, and gory, and so shocking at times. The blend of Chinese mythology with horror and crime fiction is so perfectly balanced, and totally captivating. 

I loved this book so fucking hard. So incredibly excited for Baker’s next horror novel, JAPANESE GOTHIC.