Songs for Ghosts: A. Novel

 

Rating: 4 because it is complex and difficult to label

My Thoughts:

This was a complex story because I could not find the right label or genre for this. What was it? How do I describe it? Sometimes it is just a mystery. But it is also a ghost story. It is a family story, but like any good mystery, I am not sure how things connect, and when connections revealed itself in the story, I was just as surprised as the character. So it is also about not just one, but two unreliable narrators. It is about loss, tragedy, young love, mature love, mother's love, child's love, betrayal. It is a "play within a play" of sorts. It is about ghosts amongst us. It is about music. It is about being lost in translation. It is about queer love as well as mixed race love. It is about forbidden love. It is about two cultures. It is about being hapa and in multiple worlds and cultures at once, much like the author. Young readers can glom onto any of the different labels based on what they need from this novel. 

Perhaps in the end, for me, this is a story about remembering. I think I will go to the graveyard this weekend to visit some ancestors.

From the Publisher:

When Adam discovers a diary in his attic, he is enthralled by its account of a young woman's life in Nagasaki. A hundred years separate them, yet like Adam, she is caught between cultures, relationships, and heartbreak.

She also writes of the ghosts that have begun to seek her out, which Adam dismisses as fantasy—until he begins to be haunted by her terrifying spirit. Unravelling the mystery of her identity—and the wrong done to her—seems to be the only way to save himself.

This leads Adam to a home stay in Nagasaki, where he begins to reconnect to his heritage not only through Japanese language and culture, but also by connecting with long-lost family members. And then begins a race against time as Adam and his new crush, Jo, attempt to untangle a story that has rippled through generations . .

Publication Information:

Author: Clara Kumagai

Publisher: Amulet Books (August 12, 2025)

Print length: 400 pages

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

 

Stars: 5, not for its ability to be used in the classroom, which is why I give 5 stars, but more because it reawakened my teen obsession with horror novels. 

My Thoughts:

Non-white ghost stories are MUCH scarier. There, I said it. Sorry, not sorry. I am not being reverse racist. I am speaking from experience. The obake stories I grew up with in Hawaiʻi, like the faceless woman in the bathroom of the old Kahala drive in theatre, or the other long haired faceless women in kimono in the black and white movies at the Japanese theatre in Chinatown.  .  . horrifying. Then there are the forests and coastlines of Hawaiʻi where as young children we are warned to ignore the voice calling your name. Do not turn around. Even the rocks that do not want to be moved. Try moving it with your heavy equipment. Your tractor breaks, or you move it and it goes back home. 

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is that kind of asian horrifying. Put the lights on. Leave the lights on. Look for hands crawling out of the shadows. Don't feed the ghosts. They will come back. 

This story takes place in COVID New York where someone is killing Asians and ripping bats up near them or calling them bat eaters and shoving them into trains so that their faces explode onto the tracks. Things that white people do are scary enough, but that is just the inhumane part of living in a racist society.

What is absolutely terrifying are the ghosts that will not settle and cannot leave. When I was a young girl, I would visit my grandparents on another island and I would bring these flowers for the grave. We called them obake anthuriums and they are only found on Hawaiʻi island. Once my grandfather told me that I don't have to bring as many because someone steals them from the grave. I told him that whoever is stealing the flowers will get "batchi." It is a Japanese term for bad luck and negative karma. He told me something that makes sense when thinking about this book. He said batchi only happens when you believe in it. So why are the ghosts not haunting this killer that takes pictures of the victims with the bats and posts it on some hate sight? Why do the hungry ghosts not haunt the people who comment on these pictures and say that these victims deserve it because of the "China virus"? Why do they only come to Cora? Because, like my grandfather said, she believes in it.  I guess I believe too because I could not read this at night. Too many shadows. Not enough light. 

If your students like this, give them:

Man Made Monsters by Andrea Rogers

She is a Haunting by Trang Than Tran

and Tran's new book on my TBR list They Bloom at Night

What all of these horror stories have in common, including this one, is that from the lens of a non-white author, the horror is not just about monsters, but about monsters that walk in the light. Meaning, these are novels about social injustice, colonisation, racism, and all the things that haunt this society.

From the Publisher:

In this explosive horror novel, a woman is haunted by inner trauma, hungry ghosts, and a serial killer as she confronts the brutal violence experienced by East Asians during the pandemic.

Cora Zeng is a crime scene cleaner, washing away the remains of brutal murders and suicides in Chinatown. But none of that seems so terrible when she’s already witnessed the most horrific thing possible: her sister, Delilah, being pushed in front of a train.

Before fleeing the scene, the murderer shouted two words: bat eater.

So the bloody messes don’t really bother Cora—she’s more bothered by the germs on the subway railing, the bare hands of a stranger, the hidden viruses in every corner, and the bite marks on her coffee table. Of course, ever since Delilah was killed in front of her, Cora can’t be sure what's real and what’s in her head.

She pushes away all feelings and ignores the advice of her aunt to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open. But she can't ignore the dread in her stomach as she keeps finding bat carcasses at crime scenes, or the scary fact that all her recent cleanups have been the bodies of East Asian women.

As Cora will soon learn, you can’t just ignore hungry ghosts.

For fans of Stephen Graham Jones and Gretchen Felker-Martin, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng is a wildly original, darkly humorous, and subversive contemporary novel from a striking new voice in horror.

Publication Information:

Author: Kylie Lee Baker

Publisher: MIRA (April 29, 2025)

Hardcover: 304 pages