I was honestly hooked since reading the dedication, and it didn’t let up.

Well into the zombie apocalypse, life functions normally. People still go to work, buy groceries, and scientists are working to find a cure. All the zombies were rounded up and disposed of by the government, except for one.

Kesta secretly keeps her undead husband chained in the bedroom, hoping to keep him stable until a cure. She is a mess, beleaguered with grief and simultaneously holding on to hope.

I like the scientific bits explaining how this zombie virus works. The pacing is slow, but heartfelt. It feels like a mix of Contagion (2011) where you have virologists running around and testing vaccines, and Resident Evil (2002) with a secret underground lab and a zombie outbreak.

Thank you so much to @netgalley and Gallery Books for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

If you’re a fan of science heavy Sci-Fi (especially the kind that leans into virology, pathology, and real world plausibility), then One Yellow Eye is absolutely worth your time. Think Contagion, but with a zombie twist.

What sets this book apart is how deeply it immerses you in the scientific process behind a zombie outbreak. The protagonist, a pathologist, is laser focused on saving her husband, who was infected during the initial wave of the virus. While the emotional stakes are clear, the book prioritizes her methodical efforts to understand and combat the infection over heavy character development or backstory. For me, that was a huge win.

This is not a typical zombie thriller. It's quieter, more cerebral, and deeply grounded in the biology of the apocalypse. If you enjoy pandemic fiction that treats science seriously and centers a determined, competent woman at its core, you’ll find One Yellow Eye a gripping and refreshingly smart read.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Gallery Books, and Leigh Radford for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

One Yellow Eye is a quiet, unsettling story that explores trauma, survival, and transformation through an intimate and lyrical lens. Leigh Radford’s tone is haunting yet beautiful, with each chapter unfolding like a delicate but dangerous secret. The narrative structure mirrors the protagonist’s inner unraveling, making the plot feel organic and deeply personal. The imagery is vivid, the pacing deliberate, and the emotional weight of the story lingers. As past and present collide, Radford draws the reader into a story that’s as introspective as it is eerie. A poetic, atmospheric novel that stays with you long after reading.

🐍🔬👁 Til death👁🔬🐍

And sometimes even beyond that....

A love story, a grief story, a secret...

How far will you go for the ones you love?

Kesta took the promise of "in sickness and in health" to heart and did everything and more to get her beloved back. Obsessively so. Months after the "zombie" outbreak and it being contained and all of the infected being eradicated, she holds a secret, her infected husband chained and maintained "alive" while she tries everything to find a cure.

And try everything she does.

This goes into how we got to where we are in the zombie apocalypse and all the scientific intricacies of how to cure the outbreak.

It had me with one tab open to Google terms and with tissues nearby when things got too feely. I was heavily invested in this, a mix between 28 days later and Grays Anatomy with a hint of I-Zombie. This was a good story into a zombie outbreak not leaning into random people surviving, but to the overlooked part of society, the scientist, that desperately look for answers while also grieving their own personal loses. It goes into her stages of grief, especially the denial and anger one, where she turns her back on anyone that doesn't aid her cause.

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from this author!

I would love to thank NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this e-book ARC in exchange for an honest review

Love. Science. Grief. Zombies.
How far would you go to save the one you love? How set in stone are your ethics? What would drive you to do what you previously thought was the unimaginable.
One Yellow Eye is an ode to grief, while also being wildly entertaining and smart. If you can't see the world in shades of gray, Kesta and Tim will manifest it for you by the end of the novel.

As London is rebuilding in the wake of a zombie epidemic, medical scientist Kesta Shelley is harboring a deadly secret. The zombified remains of her beloved husband Tim is kept restrained in her home as she races against time to find a cure to restore him to his former mortal state.

Throughout the story, Kesta's love for Tim is palpable, obsessive; what would otherwise be a beautiful love story is grotesquely disfigured by horrific scenes of a weatherworn Kesta romancing the sedated remains of her husband. This presented a wonderful, classic horror vibe ala Mary Shelley (likewise the notable surname for Kesta). It was fun for this classic horror fan to encounter this type of styling in a modern horror book -- just the thought of keeping an undead loved one hidden away in a guest bedroom is by itself incredibly chilling.

Much like the horror elements, the "sci" was similarly strong in this "sci-fi." Radford did not shy away from a commendable deep dive into biological science -- both in what Kesta encounters peering into her microscope and an ultimate biological exploration and explanation for the zombie epidemic. Horror/Sci-fi must be one of the most challenging genres to tackle, let alone in a debut novel! This will be an author to follow for sure.

While Kesta's descent into madness is a slow burn, the story is so artfully woven that I enjoyed the ride. That said, after such careful weaving of the proverbial web, the ending came quickly, and I wasn't completely satisfied with where we landed… After the creepiness of the buildup, I was hoping for a metaphorical twist of the knife to play us off, but perhaps that is just the old-school horror fan in me talking.

If you are a fan of classic, gothic horror like Mary Shelley or Edgar Allan Poe, you will love this book. Also, sci-fi fans with a flair for the macabre, like readers of S.A. Barnes, will similarly take to this story. I have to say, I am enjoying this new examination of zombies from a more empathetic angle. Another fantastic selection in this vein is It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over, by Anne de Marcken.

Thank you to NetGalley, Leigh Radford, and Gallery Books for sending me an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Rating 3.5 rounded up

Quick very high level summary.
Desperately trying to find a cure for a zombie virus, scientist, Kesta Shelley. The government is desperate to eliminate the infected so kill now ask questions later is the moto. Kesta is picked to work for the government in search of a cure while trying to hide her undead husband. As time goes on Kesta becomes increasing desperate bordering on obsessed which is only increasing the danger.

My Take.
This was a unique take on the zombie genre and a welcome change. The author was able to give the story such a realistic feel. I enjoy a good zombie story but most you end up over looking obvious plot holes but no so with this story. This story is more emotional and more focused on the mental toll it takes on the survivors rather than just continued fighting to survive. I am no scientist but I enjoyed the scientific portions of the novel. They where written well and felt very realistic but again I do not have a science major. Overall this was the fresh take on a zombie apocalypse that I didn’t know I needed.

One Yellow Eye is an interesting take on the zombie apocalypse. Set 6 months after a zombie outbreak had been contained, and life is starting to get back to normal in London. British scientist Ketsa's husband Tim had been bitten during the outbreak, and she has been keeping him locked up and heavily sedated in her flat. Determined to find a cure, she manages to be selected to work for top-secret Project Dawn, which gives her hands-on access to the virus and experimental treatments. As the book progresses, Kesta begins to spiral mentally, under stress of keeping her husband alive and secret, trying to maintain friendships, and overworking herself to find the cause and cure of the virus.
This was a very different approach to the zombie novel, as it focused heavily on the science aspects of virology and had virtually no actual zombies (other than poor Tim). I did really enjoy this book, Kesta was a complicated protagonist, her love and obsession for curing her husband had her making questionable decisions, alienating the people trying to help her, and spiraling at work.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of One Yellow Eye in exchange for my honest review. I do look forward to reading more by this author in the future.

A zombie/horror tale that, at times, felt too reminiscent of COVID, but in the end did enough to feel unique and distinct. Our main character, having survived an isolated zombie outbreak in London, now has to face the reality that her husband didn't escape the pandemic unscathed. How far will she go to save her undead husband? Find out in this dark humored tale that has a whole lot of (undead) heart.

One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford, Ketsa Shelley has just lived through one of the worst ordeals in history a zombie apocalypse that only happened in London. She’s also one of the few that works at the hospital diagnosing diseases but has applied to be on the Project Dawn team that’s looking for a cure to what causes zombie ism. she has a very personal reason for seeking a cure it’s because she has her infected husband Tim handcuffed to the radiator at home laying in a zombie state. Kesta isn’t people friendly and the only friend she has is Jesse, but she has been avoiding Jesse because she knows Jesse can read her like a book and will know she is keeping secrets. When she finally gets on the team at Project Dawn she is totally letdown at the lack of progress they’re making and to make matters even worse there is a secret project her coworker Dudley got to be a part of but that she did not. She has been stealing medicine from the hospital to keep Tim as comfortable and sedated as possible especially when she leaves for work . So ultimately she is living two lives one as a seeker of a cure in the second as a caretaker to the diseased Tim. she wants a cure to cure the love of her life. The desire for a cure will cause her to do the unthinkable but will it work and is it worth it? I didn’t like cats that much but really loved the story and although I was a little disappointed by the ending I still definitely recommend it especially if you love science filled sci-fi the new definitely love this story. It says a lot of good things about this book that the main character to me was unlikable yet I couldn’t stop reading The story I Reddit in one setting and didn’t stop until it was over. I did wish for a different ending but didn’t absolutely hate the ending I got I just wish she would’ve come to this conclusion much sooner in the book but having said that it’s still so worth reading. I felt so bad for little live But I guess for the greater good right? I also wish there would’ve been a bigger reaction to the outcome of cooks character. I really liked her and thought her and cats made such good friends. There were more than one thing that was left unanswered but I guess they weren’t important questions and I still close the book wanting to recommend it despite the minor negatives. #NetGalley, #gallery books, #TheReviewer, #MyHonestReview, #LeighRadford, #OneYellowEye,

This is one of the grimmest books I've read in a long time. One Yellow Eye is clearly inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic that happened in real life, however thankfully does not rely on too many overt similarities beyond a pandemic is happening.

This book takes place in present day London where there was an outbreak of a disease that turned people into zombies, however the virus was swiftly eliminated by the military and in some awful circumstances, family and friends, swiftly killing the infected. By the time Kesta Shelley, a hospital employee turned researcher, begins working on a cure for the virus all of the infected are supposed to be dead. Except her husband Tim who is dead on paper, but kept locked in a room while Kesta works to cure him.

The science in this book is very interesting and I learned about a real life horrific neurological disease that affects snakes, and it was interesting to read about how viruses make the jump from human to animal, however the book didn't completely explain how this happened within their world. I liked that the zombies weren't completely stereotypical undead monsters so the plot seemed a lot more plausible from a scientific perspective.

Some of the characters were very two dimensional and it seemed like Kesta had a lot of "plot armor" to get away with keeping her zombie husband locked up for so long. It was confusing as to how she was able to do that since Kesta was completely falling apart psychologically throughout the book (which makes sense), although on the other hand, the plot was making the point about how fearful and isolated folks can be, not only just off the end of a zombie apocalypse, but generally in a society that is becoming more and more disconnected from each other socially.

The plot behind the lab Kesta ends up working in seemed a little cartoonish and again, she has lots of plot armor with her actions, however it was interesting to see the dynamic with those working for find a cure and those with more nefarious intentions.

Overall the main idea behind this book was to investigate how far a person would go to save the love of their life, which the author notes in the afterward. I didn't think that was entirely gotten across since we never really get to know Kesta's husband Tim as a non-zombie. Much of the non-science plot centers around how Kesta never cultivated any relationships aside from her university best friend Jess because she was so focused on her work and relied on Tim for everything else.

She does finally develop real relationships at the end and has some character growth however that wasn't fully fleshed out and was written more in an "and this is what happened next" manner. I think this book worked best as a body horror/psychological thriller than a book about love and relationships.

I rounded my review up to 4 stars because despite my issues with some of the plot, it was still very well written and compelling.

Many thanks to Gallery Books and to NetGalley for this ARC to review. This review is my honest opinion.

Engaging, entertaining, and an original take on zombies. A recommended purchase for collections where genre bent dystopian/horror is popular.

One Yellow Eye

I did not, not like the book. I just couldn’t get into it.
There was a great premise that was not solely focusing on surviving a constant zombie apocalypse, moving on, and rebuilding while hoping it doesn’t restart again.
What for lack of a better term that turned me off was that the main character Kesta kept her undead husband “alive” drugged up and hoping for a cure. That is what happens in the first chapter, but what does it accomplish? Maybe a spark of the person is still inside or basic animalistic tendencies. I am not trying to hate on this, but shifting from hoping to reverse the damage and continuing a marriage to government conspiracy. It was hard to see a semi happy medium.
I did appreciate the empathy and Kesta’s willingness to fight for what was left of her husband. I hope other people give this a try and enjoy it.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rating: This was such an interesting take on a zombie sci-fi book, with little bits of love & humor mixed in! The portrayal of the infected & the back story of how it occurred was so interesting, the lab parts were so intriguing & didn’t falter. The character development with the FMC held throughout slow & steady, at the end which was really plausible.

There were bits & pieces where events seemed to veer off in a way, one part would be brought up & never really mentioned again. I also feel like some situations in itself could’ve been portrayed a little bit better, such as more background or being more in depth with the scenarios. Overall, it was an adventurous read & it was a refreshing take on this type of dystopia as well!

2.5/5 Two stars feels a little harsh, because this book does have a few things going for it. It's a novel take on...zombie psychology? Ontology? I don't know - it has a different look at zombies. It captures post-pandemic and caretaker anxieties quite well. The story's unique, too, and the look at the research can be fun. A good chunk of the book (mostly the middle third or so) rolls around quite nicely. It's not unenjoyable...

But

It has some major flaws:

1) The protagonist, Kesta, is unlikable, and I don't think she's meant to be. There's nothing appealing here, so as we watch her fall into obsession, it's hard to even root for her (if we're supposed to). The author's said that the book is about the lengths we'd go to to save a loved one, but it too often doesn't read that way. Kesta comes across as cruel and deranged, and there's a better book inside this one about the damage her obsession and desperation does to her. We don't have enough of an emotional connection to feel sympathetic, and she ends up looking more mad than desperate. An alternate version would have taken this story as a tragedy, as one woman's pride leading to a crisis.

2) The love story at the center of the book doesn't work at all. We're repeatedly told that Kesta and Tim have a great relationship, but we never, ever see it. Weaving more of the past into the novel would have helped tremendously.

3) There's an entire mystery subplot that goes nowhere. At all. I'm not sure if the it was supposed to have ended at what felt like a midway point or if the author just forgot to wrap it up.

4) The pacing is off. It's not tense enough for an action/thriller/whatever story, or affecting enough for a love story. Radford's prose is functional and unproblematic, but it's also unvaried. More sense of rhythm could have heightened suspense.

5) The minor characters are the most interesting people (Cooke especially), but are still sometimes hard to get a read on. I never decided what I thought of Jess.

6) There's a major plothole. <spoiler>Much of the narrative involves Kesta trying to get home in time to sedate Tim, or at least checking in on him through her phone. When she's comatose for 5 days, it doesn't seem to matter. He should have been raging in the room. I can think of a workaround (the magic Reanimator semi-cure), but it ignores a major structure of the rest of the novel.</spoiler>

7) The ending is...iffy. It's formally satisfying, but I'm not convinced it follows the internal logic of the novel. It sort of does, so this isn't even a full-on complaint, but I think it could have been handled better.

In short, there are a lot of promising ideas here, but I don't think Radford puts them all together effectively (and I think some stricter editing could have solved some of the issues). It's a first novel, and feels like it, so it will still be interesting to see what she does from here.

I really liked how refreshing it was for a zombie book however it fell short on quite a few things.
It was in the middle of a romance but without "proving" the romance to empathize with her descent to madness and i kept waiting for the consequences of the journalism plot and it look like it got dropped as soon as it wasn't needed to fill anymore.
The "secret" lab that everyone in the world knows where it is felt a little ridiculous.
Though I really liked the scientific research mixed with real disease it was interesting to follow and kept me enjoying the book
Overall I enjoyed reading it and had a good time but it has a lot of flaws as soon as you think about it

So this was terrible in a really unique set of ways. Part of it was that a lot of it dialogue and plot points are just eye-rolling for lack of a better word. People don't talk like this, and the way some things are set up feels like a teenager imagining Big Important Conversations. People's motivations were childish, silly, and sometimes confusing, shifting based on the needs of the plot. Every now and then a disembodied narrative voice parachutes in at the beginning of a chapter to offer some weird musings that add nothing. Some commentary the narrating voice offers is just absurd like "a licensed counsellor, able to stick a fancy title in front of her name, hadn't the faintest idea how to navigate grief when it plunged as deeply as this" after a grieving widow expressed... suicidal thoughts. Suicidal thoughts are perhaps one of the most common reasons people seek counseling? It's extraordinarily common for people not otherwise depressed to feel suicidal while grieving a loved one? That would not be shocking to anyone, least of all a licensed therapist.

A lot of these issues reflect a more central and profound thematic problem, which is the novel itself doesn't see Kesta as an unreliable, and indeed monstrous, narrator. Kesta is so catastrophically, myopically selfish both in and outside her grief, and her selfishness makes her truly cruel and manipulative to everyone around her. When the "reveal" of Tim, kept catatonic and captive with open sores over his body from restraints, happened at the beginning of the novel I actually gasped. Calling him "darling" and engaging in these sick pantomimes as she tortures him over months and months, becoming sicker and more physically grotesque herself was such an incredible set up for what I imagined would be a climactic inversion of the unreliable narration—either Kesta finally sees her monstrousness and the torture she's enacted on the person she was supposed to cherish and has to grapple with it, or there's a narrative slippage where we see Kesta through someone else (POV shift or someone's reaction through Kesta's POV). The tragedy would be either Kesta having to cope with her own guilt and shame, or us, the readers, having to know she's irredeemable and has made her husband justifiably hate her. The absurdity of a lot of the plot then makes sense—of course Kesta thinks her grief is so special and unique that no one could ever fathom it, even therapists or other people that have lost their spouses in the exact same way. Of course Kesta thinks she's so intelligent and important that her personal intervention is necessary to make these scientific advancements. Of course her friend is self-centered and annoying for correctly recognizing that she's severely mentally ill and everyone is in love with her. Of course tricking random men in a bar into being test subjects for an illegitimate trial is just the kind of sacrifice necessary for scientific advancement. But the novel doesn't just not go there, it actively reinforces that Kesta is correct and her interpretation of events is true. It's a bit unsettling that the author seems to think the main character is sympathetic and correct? Even her misinterpretation about Tim is revealed to be that he's exclusively motivated by spreading the virus, not that she tortured his corpse for months because she can't handle her own self-imposed isolation.

I gave it two stars instead of one because there was some interesting writing in it and I've certainly read worse, but both at the thematic level and the smaller level of interlocking plot points and characterization it was a one.

One Yellow Eye is unlike any other zombie story I’ve ever read. Instead of being thrown into brain-splattering zombie-killing action, the story is set in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak. Our main character is a scientist called Kesta, who is dedicated to finding a cure for the disease. But she isn’t just working out of the kindness of her heart; her zombified husband, Tim, is locked up in the spare bedroom.

I really enjoyed the storyline which focused on Kesta’s work in the not-so-secret underground lab. I found the science angle fascinating and Kesta having a personal reason to push the boundaries really worked. However, I do think that the storyline at home could have been a bit stronger. While Kesta’s messy mental state was vividly etched, I thought her relationship with Tim needed more fleshing out. As well as wishing I could have been let in on what made their relationship worth going to such extreme measures to try to save, I also think there could have been higher stakes than neighbours occasionally calling in noise complaints.

Overall, the story was an interesting reflection on grief, but I would have liked a harder emotional punch!

3.5 stars rounded down.

Unintentionally, this is the second zombie book I’ve read in three weeks and it’s interesting that both did something to zombies that most authors don’t - had them retain their human consciousness on some level. Maybe because both were written by women and both were exploring the boundaries of love rather than true zombie logistics.

I made a promise to myself to be pickier about what I choose to read this year and I’m hugely disappointed that this book fell short of a 4 star rating for me. It moved so slowly, and walked a rather uninteresting path between love story and zombie sci-fi. It really needed to be wholly one or the other.

As far as how much Kesta loved her husband, it was portrayed mostly through desperation and an unwillingness to let go. But we weren’t ever given a really good picture of what it was she was refusing to let go of. A happy marriage? Ok…but show us what made it special. Instead, there were a couple of anecdotes from side characters telling us how much they loved him, but we weren’t ever given a chance to get to actually know him. In the end, although we were to be convinced she acted out of love, it was clear to me that she put her unwillingness to be without him before her willingness to show him mercy or even to consider the torturous existence she had imprisoned him in. Doesn’t sound like love to me.

When we weren’t at home with her caretaking her husband’s shell, we were at the lab with Kesta, where she was living out the sci-fi part of the story for a (not at all) secret government organization that was both tasked with finding a cure and with basically weaponizing the virus. Sounds exciting, right? It wasn’t. It was wildly far fetched and unrealistic, even with allowing for the imagining of something that has never happened…where was the security? The protocol? The hierarchy? It was easy to sneak in and out, one small man was in charge, and very little was actually being accomplished for much of the book. And seemingly everyone, including other countries, knew exactly what they project was, what it was called and where its secret location was.

Add a couple of loose ends to the mix (what happened to the journalist storyline?) and this book fell a little flat for me. All that being said, I enjoyed reading it mostly because I expected something huge to be coming for most of the book. When I realized it wasn’t going to happen, I found myself at the end, so I suppose you could say it kept me interested.

It was a decent effort, but I really wish it could go back to the drawing board and improved before publishing.

One Yellow Eye is the first in my "zombie/love story". Leigh Radford's writing style is truly refreshing and memorable. I wish to see more of her work. A reflective, heartbreaking and terrifying story about how far you would go for the ones you love. I recommend this to fans of Dystopian/ Horror genre.