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

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⭐ 5/5 Review: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng — Jiangshi, Justice, and Pandemic-Era Rage 🦇👻

👉 Grab Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng on Amazon 📚 (affiliate link)

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⚠️ Content & Trigger Warnings

• Racism / xenophobia (COVID-era) 😷

• Graphic violence & murder 💀

• Sexual harassment / assault (mentioned)

• Child abuse & death 🧸

• Suicidal ideation & mental illness

• Animal cruelty 🐈

• Police corruption / cover-up

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First Impressions 💬

Wow. Just—wow. This is a level of horror mastery I wasn’t ready for. I went in blind (new-to-me author + didn’t even read the blurb) and got walloped by a story that’s scary, timely, and deeply personal. If you love ghost stories—specifically jiangshi from Chinese folklore—this will scratch an itch you didn’t know you still had. Growing up in China, jiangshi terrified me; decades in the U.S. made me forget that fear. This book brought it back… in the best, creepiest way. 🫣

Baker tackles COVID-era anti-Asian hate head-on—“bat eater” slurs and all—and threads it through a supernatural investigation that never lets up. It’s bold, it’s gripping, and it’s so easy to recommend (unless you’re xenophobic, in which case… this ain’t for you).

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Book Overview 🧭

Title: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng (2025)
Author: Kylie Lee Baker
Genre: Horror / Urban Fantasy / Psychological Thriller
Setting: New York City, 2020–2021 (early pandemic)
Why it works: Chinese folklore + true-crime patterns + political rot + grief ritual = a haunting that actually means something.

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🚨 Spoiler Warning

Full, detailed spoilers below—including the ending and what happens with the thumb drive. Proceed if you’re ready for all the reveals. 👇

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📖 Full Plot Summary (with Ending)

The Spark: A Hate Crime on the Subway

Cora Zeng, a young Chinese American crime-scene cleaner in NYC, is still reeling from the most traumatic moment of her life: watching her half-sister Delilah get pushed onto the subway tracks by a man who calls her “bat eater.” It’s April 2020—the early months of COVID—and xenophobia is everywhere. Delilah dies instantly, and Cora’s world collapses.

Months later, Cora is working long nights cleaning up violent scenes in Chinatown with her coworkers Harvey Chen and Yifei Liu, two other young Chinese immigrants just trying to survive pandemic-era New York. As they scrub blood off floors and bag evidence, the three of them notice something horrifying:

🦇 East Asian women are turning up murdered across the city.
🦇 Bats appear at nearly every scene.
🦇 Nobody—police or press—cares.

Cora’s Auntie Zeng warns her that it’s Ghost Month, when restless spirits walk among the living. Cora brushes it off… until shadows start to follow her. Something in the dark taps, watches, and leaks onto her floorboards with sharp teeth. She convinces herself it’s Delilah’s ghost, especially when she recognizes the jade bracelet on the wrist of the figure that appears in darkness.

But things escalate:
– Lights seem to be the only thing keeping the ghost at bay.
– A murdered doctor, Yuxi He, keeps appearing in photographs Cora didn’t put in her bag.
– And a dead police officer’s thumb drive literally falls into her hands.

Cora can’t open the files, but she knows it's bad.

📰 No One Will Listen

The trio tries to go to the media. The reporter dismisses them. Police brush them off. The city is too busy fighting a virus and racism to care about the marginalized victims piling up.

Meanwhile, the haunting intensifies. Cora has the gnawing sense that the ghost isn’t trying to hurt her — it’s trying to get her attention.

🍊 The Feast Gone Wrong

Following Chinese ritual, Auntie Zeng tells Cora to appease the dead. Harvey and Yifei help her prepare a full ghost feast.

Then disaster:

Yifei’s roommate and boyfriend eat the offerings.
The hungry ghost appears.
And it devours everything — the couple, the food, the plates, the tablecloth — in the most horrifying scene Cora has ever witnessed.

🦠 COVID, Clues, and Catastrophe

All three friends fall sick with COVID, isolated in their tiny apartments. Through fever and fear, Cora hears frantic knocking patterns she can’t decipher.

When they recover, Harvey calls the girls: he cracked the case.

But when they arrive, Harvey is dead — stuffed inside a dry-cleaning machine.

Panicked, Yifei and Cora flee in Paisley’s car. As they drive, Yifei reveals the terrifying truth about her family: she had a younger sister who was nearly killed at birth under China’s one-child policy… but survived as something no longer human. Years later, the sister slaughtered their parents. Yifei trapped her in a closet and ran.

Suddenly, a swarm of bats slams into the windshield. Yifei loses control.
The crash kills her instantly.

Cora, dazed and bloody, stumbles to a lit storefront and calls Auntie Zeng.

👻 Not Delilah

Auntie Zeng delivers the blow:

The ghost is not Delilah.
Her jade bracelet had the wrong rune.

Back home, Cora finally cracks the password on the thumb drive — the same rhythmic tapping the ghost had been doing for weeks.

Inside the files:

– 374 murdered East Asian women, photographed like trophies
– Evidence of multiple killers, not a single serial murderer
– A white-supremacist forum where men share “bat eater” memes and murder strategies
– NYPD emails suppressing cases
– And a message from NYC’s mayor (Mayor Webb) instructing the police to cover up the murders before re-election

And the ghost finally reveals her face:

Yuxi He, the first victim.
She has been guiding Cora toward the truth the entire time.

🔥 Justice, Ghost-Style

Cora gathers joss paper, jade, and propane tanks.
With hundreds of vengeful ghosts behind her, she walks straight to Gracie Mansion, the home of the mayor who had actively covered up the murders.

She sets it on fire.
The ghosts pull her away to safety.
The mayor burns.

Finally, thanks to the thumb drive Cora anonymously mails out, The New York Times exposes the murder ring and the NYPD’s cover-up.

🌑 After the Ashes

Cora moves in with Auntie Zeng.
She gets vaccinated.
She takes a more peaceful cleaning job.
And she continues honoring the dead through nightly rituals.

In the final scene, Cora sits on her bed and holds out half an orange into the dark.

A ghostly hand takes it.
She eats the other half.

The living and the dead, sharing space.
Not peacefully — not yet — but honestly.

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If You Liked This, Try… 📚

• The Keeper of Night — Kylie Lee Baker (myth + horror, Japan/UK)

• The Ghost Bride — Yangsze Choo (Chinese afterlife, lush and eerie)

• The Hole — Hye-young Pyun (quiet dread, moral rot)

• The Last Tale of the Flower Bride — Roshani Chokshi (gothic secrets, sumptuous prose)