books

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

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So. After gathering my thoughts, and reading some other reviews, I realized I will not be as eloquent as some here. However, I enjoyed this book. SO MUCH. The folklore, the horror, the gore. How Cora was able to rise above that, make connections with friends after the horrific murder of her sister, with whom she had a complicated relationship with. Re-connecting with her Asian heritage through her one aunt after being forced into accepting Christianity by her white aunt. The racism. THE RACISM. Like holy smokes. During COVID, racism towards Chinese (and by extension, those in other asian countries like Korea, Japan, etc. since white people think they all look the same) was at an all time high. No different than after 9/11, when people (usually white) blamed ANYONE that even looked remotely like those horrible terrorists. For Cora, and by extension, her friends/co-workers, enduring that during the early days and then height of the pandemic and not do anything about it because they knew it would make it worse was heartbreaking to read.

Cora, after the death of her sister, becomes a forensic crime scene cleaner. The past few cleans, though, have shown a pattern of brutal deaths of Asian-American women, and the calling card of dead and mutilated bats. The last thing Cora remembers was someone calling her sister “bat-eater” before throwing her in front of a train and decapitating her. Remember, this story it GORY and it STARTS with that death. We then move into her and her co-workers trying to figure out just WHO could be doing this, when Cora divulges to them that she is being followed by a Hungry Ghost. Something Cora didn’t believe in because she didn’t really believe in anything from her Asian heritage. Not that I blame her, she was definitely in the category of “not Asian enough, not white enough”, since it was something she was basically told her whole life. Once they decide that they need to get rid of the ghost, who Cora believes is her sister, they think it’s over. But it’s just the beginning.

I can’t even decide just how much I loved this book. It hit all the feels, all the tropes, all the checkboxes for a great horror novel. Horror isn’t always gore and jump scares (which this had a LOT of and I’m so glad I read it during the daytime haha) but sometimes the horror is in the everyday people. Of the people you think should be protecting you (looking at you cops) who are instead, covering up crimes by those higher than them, at the cost of the people dying. It was a crazy read, but a great one. I would absolutely read this again.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

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I can’t even begin to tell you how many tabs I have on this book. SO MANY AREAS I left for notes and coming back to! I actually left little tabs to go back to my favorite passages. I haven’t done that since needing to annotate in college! There are quite a few 2 and 3 star reviews but I have to say, as someone who also reads fanfiction and can sometimes feel like a complete nerd, I LOVED this book. I was thinking about it for days, just trying to come up with a good review. I’ve had to read other books since then just to be able to come back now and write one, almost 9 months later!

Cather is a very introverted girl, a freshman in college. Her twin sister, Wren, is far more outgoing. They had, until now, done pretty much everything together, but Wren is going off and using college as her way to find out who she is (as one does). Cather wants everything to stay the same. Her roommate Reagan, is a couple years older than her and on her first day, she meets Levi…who is just in the room, because he is best friends with Reagan. Thus begins Cather’s college career. Her father is kind of a mess and her mother has never been in the picture so Cather was counting on having Wren by her side. Good thing she has Simon and Baz…well, if they were real anyways. Cather is a super popular fanfiction writer of a popular wizard series Simon Snow. But between classes, a crush and her dad’s spiral without the girls being home, will Cather even make it through her freshman year?

Seriously, I cannot even begin to describe how much I adored this book. I can still remember parts (which is saying a lot since I tend to forget books almost as soon as I’ve read them) and remember how I felt when Cather had her first college kiss and the butterflies she must have felt…it was like reliving my own college days too!

Some favorite quotes:

“He nudged his nose against hers, and their mouths fell sleepily together, already soft and open.”
“Kisses aren’t…just with me.”
“That it wasn’t JUST a kiss, Cather. There was no JUST.”
“I want that kiss to have been the start of something. Not the end.”
“I mean, I spent four months trying to kiss you and the last six weeks trying to figure out how I managed to fuck everything up. And I just want to know-are you rooting for me? Are you hoping I pull this off?”
“You know that I’m falling in love with you, right?”

I even ended up reading the manga series that was written too, as if I didn’t already know how the book ends, and now I’m not-so-patiently waiting for volume 4 to drop! If you like coming of age stories with a little dash of fanfiction, then this is truly the book for you!