Author: Kylie Lee Baker
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Adult Fiction
Pages: 304
Publisher: MIRA
Year Published: 2025
Format: Ebook (Kindle Unlimited)
"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 coworkers 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."
My Rating: 4/5
I'm not sure exactly what I just read, but I liked it. I think the author did a great job of combining mystery, folklore and the everyday horror that were present during Covid. The racism, the hate crimes, and the death that surrounded New York (as someone who wasn't there and only saw the news). That being said, I didn't expect many of the twists, which were great, but also felt unsettling in a way that took me out of the story at some points. I would be curious to learn more about the folklore and beliefs in hungry ghosts in the future if anyone has recommendations for nonfiction works surrounding these beliefs.
Thank you for reading,
Sidny
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