#short version for LibraryReads April 2025

[teanderthalrex]

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

If you're looking for a book that is part slasher, part haunting, and part bio-horror, look no further. In the midst of the COVID pandemic of 2020, Cora Zeng is haunted by her deceased sister and stalked by a serial killer as everything in her clean and neat and somehow already spiraling life begins to fall even further apart.

Despite being told in the third person, we really do get into the mind of Cora Zeng. So much so that the clinical way in which some of the most horrific parts of the book are described feel like they're coming directly from her. I never got the feeling that Cora ever truly got close to anyone else in the book, even people who would consider her a friend. She has a distance to her created by the difficulty she has bridging her complex internal world with what is going on around her. This means that for a good portion of the book you aren't sure what is happening and what is all in her head.

Still, there are some incredibly interesting side characters in this and I'm a little sad we didn't get the chance to dissect them and figure out all the strange things they had going on. Everyone on that crime scene cleanup crew needed a little backstory summary at the back of the book.

The ending is good, and it makes a point of showing the continuation of certain events as Cora adjusts to her new normal.

4/5 stars. Content warnings for racism, xenophobia, sexism, and genre-typical gore.

Oh man. Harvey and Yifei need in-depth character studies because I want to know what the hell was up with Harvey and that fucking basement and Yifei and her creepy ass sister. Did the sister ever escape? Who was the dead lady at the bottom of Harvey's stairs? The people (me) want to know!

In the end, Cora hasn't really changed all that much. She's certainly learned, but she is still a shadow of a person. It seems like she is inviting ghosts into her life now in order to gain back that sense of purpose and personhood that she lost when her sister died.

But I kinda like evil avenging Cora out there murdering murderers as a potential future for her. She'd be good at the clean up.