One Yellow Eye

De: Leigh Radford

Narrado por: Sofia Engstrand

In this heart-wrenching and unique spin on the zombie mythos, a brilliant scientist desperately searches for a cure after a devastating epidemic while also hiding a monumental secret—her undead husband.

How far would you go to save your marriage? For British scientist Kesta Shelley, there is no limit.

Having always preferred the company of microbes, Kesta has spent her life looking down the barrel of a microscope rather than cultivating personal relationships. But that changed when Kesta met Tim—her cheerleader, her best friend, her absolute everything. So, when he was one of the last people in London to be infected with a perplexing virus that left the city ravaged, Kesta went into triage mode.

Though the government has rounded up and disposed of all the infected, Kesta is able to keep her husband (un)alive—and hidden—with resources from the hospital where she works. She spends her days reviewing biopsy slides and her evenings caring for him, but he’s clearly declining. The sedatives aren’t working like they used to, and his violent outbursts are becoming more frequent. As Kesta races against the clock, her colleagues start noticing changes in her behavior and appearance. She is withering away, self-medicating with alcohol, and has stopped attending her mandated ZARG (Zombie Apocalypse Recovery Group) meetings. Her care for Tim has spiraled into absolute obsession.

There are whispers of a top-secret lab working on a cure, and Kesta clings to the possibility of being recruited like a lifeline. But can she save her husband before he is discovered? Or worse…will they trigger another outbreak?

©2025 Leigh Radford (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio

A Zombie book like no other

About what we become when we fight to save someone, and what we loose when we loose them...but also about what we become because of the people we love. Best book! Bravo!

Love and Science

How far would you go for love and science? Loved the narrator. Main character got annoying. Very selfish although I know what she was doing was filled with good intentions. She only thought about how she could, but not if she should. Ending a little weird and unexpected. Definitely an interesting take on a zombie story. I liked the science and morality of it. Would recommend.

Creative Grief Processing

I thought this was both sadly evocative and morbidly funny. The story is creative and well told. It is a great expression of how each person needs to be free to handle grief in their own way and that it cannot be escaped.

Potentially interesting but largely frustrating

I’d have to admit that in part, my lukewarm reception of this book can be attributed to the fact that I’m not overly fond of the zombie genre. But beyond that, I found the lead character to be annoying. If a character is going to make reckless, irrational and inexplicable decisions, I’m afraid I’d need to understand her motivation. Simply being told she “just loves him so much!” was inadequate. Her desperate actions could have been explained and I may have been able to feel for her, even as I recognized the senselessness of her fight, if I knew them better. Also, the origin of the zoonotic virus was incredibly interesting and incredibly, under explored. She could hear with her tongue?? I want to know more about that! I want to know what’s happening with that going forward! To all the survivors!

Fun book, got irritated with the lead character though.

Great performance, really good story, as I love anything with the zombies and dystopia. I could relate to the lead character somewhat, but I found myself getting irritated, which I guess is a good thing, because it means she elicited some kind of emotional reaction? Not all books do that. Anyway, I recommend this book!

Surprisingly Wonderful

I’ve been glued to my earbuds as the story unfolded. I could relate and understand the main characters state of mind.

Intense Love Story

This was a deeply moving love story set in a somewhat familiar horror of a pandemic of zombie proportions. Layers exploring the manifestations of such diseases, our governments & scientific responses to them, and our base human drives coalesce into a brilliant story of grief. This emotion is captured so well by the narration that I was completely inside the story.

Great author, not so great story

*Spoiler Alert*
I loved the flow of the story and how descriptive the author is, visuals and feelings created get an A+.

The scientific side of the story gets C-.
1. The protagonist solves the virus' origin by going to the library one time. Finds the right book first shot. How incredibly lucky!
2. She, the scientist, is shocked when there is a "gain of function" side to her lab's research. Smh, was she born yesterday?
3. They isolate the virus and develop the cure in mere weeks, suggest animal trials for whopping 3 months. That's not how that works. The trials are usually much-much longer, they take years, in several stages, not 3 months. Especially, since the outbreak was already contained and technically the lab didn't need to rush that much.
4. Protagonist injects herself with virus to force the lab to move on to human trials. Ok. But she had zero guarantees that she would survive herself, so why not at least give Tim a chance by writing a note, saying, "Hey, if it works on me, please, treat him as well. If not, try ur next best thing on him, cuz what else is there to do?" It was a golden opportunity to confess that u have a zombie tacked away - look, a human subject ready for trials! The whole point of her working in that lab was to try to cure him. She already stuck him with the very first rough-draft version of the cure without waiting 2 min to see if there would be any side effects on the monkey in the lab. So incredibly unscientific of her. Smh.
5. For some unknown reason, Tim, who is actually a zombie doesn't bite her. It is suggested that his consciousness is alive somewhere behind the zombie virus, but it is not confirmed as he is usually sedated. He also doesn't try to bite the doctor who is riding in the car with him. just an 5-star uber passenger, zombing put on pause for some reason. When the cure somewhat works on him, all he does is use his speech to trick his wife into letting him out to go bite other people. Also, this whole thing about him running away and attacking a village: ten minutes ago he was described as emaciated, see-through skeleton with sloughing skin, next moment he is so fit and agile that he somehow outruns his wife and her friend (who is a man in perfect health). It didn't make sense.
6. The bit about the protagonist developing snake-like abilities to "smell" with her tongue, and getting slower in the cold as a cold-blooded snake would - that was just so cheesy.

I'll read the author's next book, but only cuz I like her style of writing. Hopefully, it won't be about science, or it will at least be better researched.