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This is more than just a zombie apocalypse novel. It's a tale about grief, about watching someone you love being ravaged by a disease and trying, and failing, to save them. In this, One Yellow Eye is perfection, truly haunting and utterly heartbreaking.

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I have reviewed One Yellow Eye for book sales and recommendation site LoveReading. I’ve chosen this title as a Liz Pick of the Month. Please see the link to the full review. Thank you.

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What a fresh and unexpectedly emotional take on the zombie genre. Kesta is clever, funny, and heartbreakingly human

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“Because with my mum, I understood that there came a point when I had to let her go,” he said … “Because it was the natural order of things. It made me understand that there are limits to what science can and should be doing. That it shouldn’t interfere with that natural order.”

Overall: What did I think of One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford?
Rating: 4.75/5
Genre: Zombie Horror

What a book. One Yellow Eye is what made me realise I like post apocalyptic books and this one talks about grief, what it means to lose your loved one and has scientific additions to it. If you have been here for a while, you’ll know that I lost my grandmother in September 2023 and she was one of my best friends, a part of my soul. Losing my grandmother felt like losing myself and I dont think I will ever find that part of me again. This is very similar to what Kesta goes through and because of that, One Yellow Eye will always have a special place in my heart as I saw too much of the old me in Kesta and related to the story a lot. Grief is hard and heavy, yet Radford deliveries it in an eerie and beautiful way.

What is One Yellow Eye about?
One Yellow Eye discusses how far and to what extent would you let the horrors consume you and try to save your loved ones?

I think once upon a time, maybe I would have done what Kesta did but now, I could never. The reason behind this is, while we want our loved ones to stick around forever, you want to encourage them to fight through their disease, to stay and be the beam of sunlight that you know them to be; however, you realise that the disease tends to chip away at their bright sunlight and what is left of them is something you cant selfishly wish to keep them around for.

Death, Grief and all the things in between
Kesta goes through a journey here only a selected few in the book can understand as Tim was the last human bitten in the book out of 11 others. She is stuck playing a role as she nurses a secret of keeping Tim (un)alive.

“Thing is, Kesta” Jess sniffed, "he’d definitely want you to be happy”… Kesta just nodded and smiled. People didn’t have a clue what Tim had wanted, and yet these days, they seemed intent on telling her that he’d want her to move on.”

She is stuck listening to others in her life tell her what Tim would have wanted, that he would want to see her move on. She has a few people around her that do try to help her but this does nothing. It made me think of how when you lose a loved one, everyone starts to tell you what to do like: Its time to move on, its time to live life again… etc.

Everyone begins to tell you that they understand what you are going through, even if they have never lost someone they considered one of their soul mates (be it a friend, spouse or family member). Kesta is surrounded by advises and tips that they understand her pain but she needs to MOVE on. As a person who grieved very differently than others, I related ALOT to this.

“Jess, Grief isn’t something you can leave behind in the long stay car park at Gatwick Airport. It goes with you everywhere.”

Scientific Elements in One Yellow Eye
Kesta is a scientist and we see a lot of elements of pathology and biomedical science in here!

”The microscope always held the answers. It foretold the future. It sealed your fate. It bore hope and death together, clutching them in the same impartial hand. The microscope never lied at 350 times magnification.”

And there are a few comparisons of scientific knowledges with grief that just makes my STEM loving heart soar (this is how I found out I love books that tackle zombie apocalypse in a scientific way guys) as Kesta dives deep into Histology and histopathology.

“She was in the grip of mitosis, collapsing in on herself and splitting into two. A new version of Kesta had separated from the first, taking all the hallmarks of the original, but something other, something different. The two Kestas must exist as one: the grieving widow at work and the scientist nursing a zombie in her flat.”

Who are you doing it for?
Throughout the story, Kesta maintains that she is doing everything to keep Tim (un)alive so that he can survive, get the cure and make it through. However, throughout the story, we see character development that shows us Kesta realising who she is actually doing it for.

“… she realised she wasn’t doing all of this for Time. She was doing it for herself, perhaps more so. She didn’t want him to die because she didn’t want to lose him, didn’t want to accept that this irrevocable schism in her life was permanent.”

Kesta has an internal conflict throughout the book about whether it is Tim still in his own body or if the virus has replaced who he once was. This is something she struggles to accept and refuses to aknowledge for most of the book. It is what we all think when we start to see a loved one become sick and as they struggle with their treatment: Is it still them there? Are they different now?

“As she sat there in the afterglow, she knew she had been deluding herself. She’d thought they were in this together, she and him, as they had been since the night they met, when they gave up their own lives to share a single life between them. But Time was in this alone, wasn’t he? He was soldiering his way down to the abyss without her.”

Wrapping up the review:
I hope you choose to pick up One Yellow Eye, that you see what it is like to lose someone you loved so much, you couldnt see a life without them. I hope you understand Kesta’s point of view and that you see what she struggled with. This is a beautiful story that tells us about the pain of life, grief and love. Everyone deserves a chance to tell their story and this was Kesta’s story.

Thank you to Tor Books, Book Break and the author for letting me partake in this tour! I am so excited to be able to partake in a tour with my substack for the first time and all opinions in here are my honest one.

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When I read "zombie pandemic" in the description, that's all I needed to know to request this on NetGalley, and I'm glad I got it because it wasn't at all what I expected. In the best way.

At its core, this is a story about loving someone who's been ravaged and taken by disease. It's about grieving someone who's still there, but not quite, and overcoming the inability of letting them go because your instinct is to do anything and everything in your power to give this person you love so much their life back so they can stay with you and you can carry on your lives together, make all your dreams come true.

But sometimes, no matter what anyone can do, the battle is lost. You wreck yourself, they're in too much pain to continue fighting, and there's nothing left to do but to accept reality and learn how to navigate the new version of your life without that person in it.

In that sense, this was a very fresh take on zombies and the zombie apocalypse. Don't expect heart-pounding horror; expect slow-moving dread, the kind that's based on a type of pain you can relate to because you've likely already lived it in experiencing the loss of a loved one to disease or can at least recognize it at a human level.

I really, really liked this. The science was cool, the plot focused on the development of a cure was interesting to follow, and the main character's journey was compelling. It was a little too slow for my taste at times, but overall, it was a great book.

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Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I went into this expecting a horror with maybe a good dose of dark humour, and did not expect it to be this really interesting look at grief and love. Like ??? Why am I tearful reading a zombie book? I don't know, but I love it! Kesta is keeping her zombie husband alive while she tries to find a cure for the virus that made him that way. One Yellow Eye is sad yet hopeful, gory yet touching, as much about grief and what it drives you to as it is about a zombie virus. It's a love letter to London, even the ugly parts of her. It's a missive to loss. It's a science-thriller mixed with horror. Thoroughly enjoyed it and will certainly look for more from the author.

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Kesta is a scientist working in the field of oncology and just survived a Zombie outbreak. In 3 months London has been cleaned from the virus and life resumes as normal. But she is living a lie: When her husband turned, she didn't kill him, she caged him in the bedroom in the hopes to find a cure. With Project Dawn recruiting her, she is getting a step closer...
One Yellow Eye made me realise that I absolutely love a very specific genre: Zombienovels written by women about grief and psychological aftermath. This one, for me, holds up with Severance by Ling Ma, It lasts forever and then it's over by Anne de Marcken and The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller. I was truly enraptured by this novel and Kesta's search for a cure. The writing is exquisite. One of the highlights of my reading year.

"The four of them were silent for a while, lost in loss, deafened by the artificial sounds around them. Just like that, their desire for a normal night, to laugh and drink and make new friends, seemed idle, almost selfish. To carry on after death wasn't a choice, but the manner in which you did so felt pointed."

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A zombie pandemic has ravaged London, leaving people in its wake terrified and desperate for answers. None more so than Kesta, who is keeping a big secret. While her husband Tim may have been bitten, he is not dead yet, and she is keeping him alive (unbeknownst to the rest of the world, particularly the government, who think they have rounded up and killed all the infected). Kesta is a scientist searching for a cure to save Tim, but she is running out of time…

This book was absolutely nothing like I thought it would be, in a very good way, because I like to be surprised by what I’m reading. Even though I thought it would be your run-of-the-mill zombie horror fiction, it was so much more. If anything, it was more about our humanity.

A story of grief, how it changes us, and what we will do for the people we love.

I was a little worried in the beginning, as it did seem slow-paced, but I think once I was fully immersed, the pace only added to the intensity of the story. I may also have had to Google a thing or two (like gain of function research), but I believe you should learn at least one new thing with every book you read.

My heart really did break for Kesta, despite her choices. It didn’t help that I’ve recently rewatched Angel when Fred is turning into Illyria and she takes over her body as if it’s a shell, and the descriptions used here were so similar and, overall, really beautifully written.

I would one hundred percent recommend it.

Thank you, NetGalley for providing the ARC.

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One Yellow Eye, Leigh Radford's debut, has such a great pitch: it's the story of a microbiologist who is studying the virus that caused a recent zombie epidemic while hiding her undead husband from the world. Kesta is desperate to find a cure for the infection so she can bring Tim back from the dead - but if he's discovered, she'll be in deep trouble, as all the infected are meant to have been disposed of safely. One Yellow Eye is beautifully paced, and I galloped through it. (I took it on holiday, and the holiday was often interrupted by me saying 'But I want to read more of the zombie novel!'). I loved Radford's ability to make the microbiology plausible as Kesta figures out how the virus evolved and how they might be able to treat it. I so wished, however, that there was more early insight into what made Kesta tick. Why is she the only person who decided to keep her suffering, rotting husband imprisoned at home, rather than kill him herself or hand him in?

While the brief flashbacks we get to Kesta and Tim's relationship are great - Tim comes across as a real person rather than the stereotypical 'dead spouse' - the answer doesn't seem to lie there. About halfway through the novel, we get more of a hint, as Kesta reflects: 'she wasn't doing all of this for Tim. She was doing it for herself... she was alone, condemned to live a life she hadn't planned for and didn't want.' Kesta, we slowly discover, has always been incredibly isolated, and Tim was really the only person she was close to. But still: why? When she met Tim she was dancing with a friend in the student union, so what changed? I thoroughly enjoyed this novel as a speculative thriller, but as an exploration of grief, it fell short because of my lack of emotional connection to Kesta. The final scenes should be as heartbreaking as they are between Miri and Leah in Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea, but it just doesn't quite get there. Nevertheless, a superior zombie novel, and definitely recommended for those who like light speculative fiction and can cope with non-gratuitous, mild body horror.

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This book is following a woman who is a cancer researcher in a hospital. There is a infectious outbreak, so content warnings for those who still can't read that at the minute. We're in a world that is post zombie-virus outbreak, people got the virus, died, and then came back to life without being themselves. Their entire existence now is to just transfer the virus.

We're supposed to be in a post-virus world now. Everyone who had the virus has been killed, according to the governments, but they still don't have a cure for it. Our scientific cancer researcher lost her husband to the virus. But he's not dead. She's hidden her husband in her bedroom, has him chained up to the wall, and because of her scientific background from working in a hospital, she's able to steal bits and pieces that she needs to care for him.

This book tackles a lot of topics. Love, infections, morality, animal testing, about letting go of loved ones and of emotional healing from grief, as well as really detailed science because Radford's mum worked in this industry industry herself. And so the science in this book comes across as really accurate. This was so good. It's so good. I haven't heard anyone talk about it, but if it sounds at all interesting to you, I would recommend picking up this light sci-fi.

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This is first and foremost a love story. The type of love we all dream about but at the same time completely destructive and all encompassing. A story of a woman who loves her husband too much to let him go and enough to sacrifice everything she has left to keep him safe.

Kesta's husband is one of the last people infected with a new virus that turns people into zombies. Instead of letting the authorities know what happened, she hides him away in their flat and tries her best to keep him alive and docile while she's trying to find a cure.

This is exactly the type of zombie book I was hoping we will get more of after covid. Where the infection doesn't lead to a complete collapse of society but rather is a temporary stumbling block after which we are all supposed to "go back to normal" as if that's even an option. And the real focus of the story is on emotions and how people deal with losing so much because of a virus.

I love zombie books that really go deep into how a virus could have happened and this one had a concept that was unique and fascinating. The science felt possible for a layman like me and honestly I could have read a whole book just about this one aspect of it.

This was a fascinating read, even when Kesta is constantly making the worst decisions she could possibly make, it's completely understandable why she's doing it. Her husband is her reason to keep going and the grief is too scary to let it catch up to her. And it makes for one relatable read.

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Overall this book was funny, haunting, and achingly human. A zombie story that’s more heartbreak than horror

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This sounds like a zombie book but it will actually break your heart as you imagine what you'd do to save the person you'd love. It will also make you think that maybe science is cool? But in a horrifying way. Anyways I really liked this. Weird yet clever. Thank you for the review copy.

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This book was such a refreshing take on zombie fiction. Although it has been advertised as a horror book, it's really more of a post horror book if that makes sense? This takes place several months after a zombie outbreak and there aren't really a lot of zombies actually in the book. It's more about how people cope after the fact.

It did contain descriptions of animal testing that made me want to cry (chapter 12 was particularly harrowing). Absolutely incredible debut novel though, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for Radford's future novels!

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Leigh Radford's One Yellow eye opens post an almost apocalypse. The zombies rose and the zombies were defeated and the people of London are living in the traumatic aftermath of that event. She quickly establishes the level of trauma through a support group for people who had to kill loved ones or see loved ones die. The main character Ketsa is one of these only Ketsa has a secret - she has kept her zombie husband alive and is soon on the team that has been tasked with finding a cure in case the scourge should rise again.

Ketsa herself is a frustrating and frankly annoying character and many of her decisions are questionable. The way she keeps her husband alive and undiscovered also stretches belief. And the side characters are not interesting enough in themselves to create enoug additional interest.

While not a big fan of zombie narratives I think this book had a fascinating hook, But while all of this is great premise, Radford is not able not pull out a compelling enough narrative out of it.

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Thank you to the Publishers and NetGalley for selecting me to read this ARC.

This is a 4.5 Star read for me!

What I thought I was getting into - An edge of your seat zombie, apocalyptic horror
What I got - A poignant, emotional, post-apocalyptic zombie horror filled with beauty, grief and humour.

Focused on our protagonist Kesta, her story truly makes the reader think about what lengths we will go to for the ones we love?
While very aware of this new environment, fear of the unknown and searching for a cure for the greater good, it was the intimate feelings and actions of Kesta that really hooked me. Leigh Radford has created a character that while her likeability is questionable, you can't but admire her motivations and empathise and hope for her to get what she wants. It also a really interesting view on how science works in terms of outbreaks - I thoroughly enjoyed the scientific/lab based sections.

he ending felt a little rushed, but that didn't detract from what was overall a refreshing take on what can be a predictable genre.

Radford's writing makes the undead feel a lot more alive.

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I was initially drawn to this book by its intriguing premise. In a post pandemic world, a woman is secretly keeping her zombie husband locked in their apartment while searching for a cure. It seemed like a tense, thrilling set up. Unfortunately, the execution didn’t live up to its potential.

I found it hard to categorise the book’s genre. While the blurb suggests horror or dystopia, it never fully commits to either. There were no real scares or suspense, and the worldbuilding was too vague to be truly dystopian. Instead, the story reads more like a surreal love story.

The writing lacked tension, and I struggled to connect with the characters or care about their fate. The ending briefly promised more, only to fizzle out in the final pages, leaving me more disappointed than moved.

Overall, while the concept was original and had promise, the book didn’t quite deliver what I was hoping for.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

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I do love a zombie book, and this one felt very refreshing.

Set in London, we follow Kesta, who has chained her husband, Tim, to the radiator in the spare room. He has recently been bitten by a zombie and has turned into the undead. If the authorities find out about him, he will be killed. Kesta hopes she can keep him a secret until a cure is developed.

This is probably the most science I've seen in a zombie book, and it felt very assessable. I had to look up what gain of function research was, but that aside, I understood what was going on and was invested in the lab works. It made me think a lot about vaccines in general and how they come to be. This is probably the first zombie book I've read where I feel like I've been educated a bit.

I was really into this. The author really got my anxiety going, kept me on the edge of my seat, while giving her characters real depth.

There's so much to think about here in Kesta's thought process, her actions, and how far she went to keep Tim alive. Her exhaustion, grief, and motivation really came alive on the page.

Five stars.

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4.25***

This is the most humane zombie story you will ever read. This is horror with heart. Gore with emotional gratification. An insight into the infected leads to a profoundly moving story. The main character makes some bad choices with good intentions and all the while, the readers root for her. This heart-wrenching post-apocalyptic story is entirely original. It really made me wonder, how far would you take your wedding vows? Because Kesta definitely paid no heed to 'til death do us part' in this dark, tense, tragic and captivating novel.

I've always loved a zombie apocalypse film/series, but this is my first foray into zombie books. I loved it. Whilst I definitely would not survive in a zombie apocalypse, this is the kind of book that I would read whilst in the midst of one.

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Unique. The kind of book you read just once because though there is humor, you just can't get over the heartbreak.
4⭐️ read

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