Love & Other Cures for the Recently Undead
by H. J. Ramsay
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted July 26, 2025
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Net Galley launched a new program last month, Booktrovert, and through one of the first giveaways offered I obtained a digital copy of this book, which was published in February. Can't recall if it was offered prior to publication, but even if so I already had a February title. Since it was not an advance review copy I wasn't obligated to read it any time soon, or at all, but found time in my schedule since it is short, and the premise sounded interesting. It is also a debut novel, and I have been reading more of those lately thanks to Net Galley and Edelweiss. [CORRECTION: I now realize it is not Ramsay's debut. They have another novel, published almost six years ago. While it sounds interesting too, since I can only find the e-book at Amazon it doesn't look like I'll be reading it any time soon.]
Love & Other Cures for the Recently Undead might work better as a movie or TV show, and yet it would also be the type of show where the audience would continually wonder why the characters are doing dumb and ill advised things. Not just the main character, but also her father and others. CeCe Campbell was celebrating ahead of her eighteenth birthday with close friends at one of their favorite restaurants. Afterward, out on the sidewalk while waiting for their Uber, CeCe notices a man who is obviously distressed, maybe drunk, or very sick, or both. She goes over to him to offer help, see if he needs a ride to the hospital. When he looks up she realizes her mistake, that he may be crazed from use of drugs. He is babbling incoherently, his eyes red-veined. He grabs her hand and bites her.
That is actually revealed later, after CeCe comes back to consciousness in a makeshift hospital bed, which she learns is in a former Costco. Her father is there, welcoming her back, attempting to soothe her and field all her questions. The opening page had her waking up somewhere with a severe headache, hearing moaning all around her. When she moved she scraped her hand and arm on asphalt. The next time she was conscious was with her father at the Costco, and he informs her it had been two years since her "accident." Her father was a veterinarian, and yet he was the one who had found the cure for CC-L, Cysticercosis-Lyssa, known colloquially as the Killer Virus. I suppose he had experience with similar infections in animals, plus many other doctors might have been casualites of CC-L. CeCe had been found in a shopping center parking lot, and the cure was administered, although I am not sure if the two years mentioned by her father ended there, or if that marked the time when she came back to consciousness at the Costco. Sadly, her father has to report her younger brother is still missing, and her mother is dead.
CeCe has to contend with a world in chaos, many dead, missing, or Infected, and a lot of infrastructure in tatters, including law enforcement and other services. Part of that is media, so I guess it makes sense that all that is revealed is what is going on in and around her town of Chico. That might be where the author lives, but all I've found is she lives somewhere in Northern Californa. The school system is trying to restructure, and CeCe has been enrolled in a GED class. She is now twenty, having to go back to her old high school, which she dreads, since it had been the scene of a lot of her fondest memories. If not for the virus, she would have graduated, already attending Ohio State, having gained a scholarship to be on their tennis team. But her boyfriend is dead or missing, along with other friends, and she feels her life is over too. Her father insists she go, so back to school it is. There are not that many other students, most of them also formerly Infected, along with at least one who was a Survivor, someone who had avoided the virus, never Infected, although that did not mean immune. CeCe later meets a girl who was immune, the source of the cure discovered by her father. He now works at CAVE, the Center for Applied Virology and Epidemiology.
Then the story goes a bit wonky when she encounters the man she is sure was the one who bit her. He had been cured, and now works for the Sanitation Department, which included not just cleaning up stores, offices, and homes, but also disposing of the dead, and being on the lookout for those who are still Infected. I found it hard to believe she recognized him right away, considering the condition he had been in when they first crossed paths. A lot of her memory of that time period is gone, probably suppressed due to the trauma, and while he does not recognize her for sure, he says she looks familiar, and wonders where he might know her from. She runs away from him then, but drops one of her school books. The next day after GED class she finds him outside on the steps waiting for her. Why she doesn't tell him she remembers him, and what he did, or why she did not tell anyone else, especially her father, is a mystery. She doesn't understand it herself. He is there the next day too, and the day after that, and since her father was delayed in picking her up, she lets him walk her home. It should be easy to figure out what happens after that, considering the book's title. However, the publisher's blurb made it sound like it would be close to a comedy, somewhat like the film Warm Bodies, but it definitely is not.
In a way it makes sense, but in others it does not. CeCe has lost most everything she cared about, and in some ways she thinks she has lost her father. He is inexplicably upbeat about everything, perhaps basking in the glory of him being the one who saved others. He had lost his wife, and his son is missing, but it has been longer for him dealing with those issues than it has been for CeCe. He has formed a new relationship with a woman who works with him at CAVE, then they spring the announcement that they are getting married. Shortly after that she is pregnant. CeCe starts to hate her, and her father a little bit too, so maybe it makes sense she would be driven toward Derrick. After all, he doesn't remember what he did, and wasn't resposible for what he did, that was the virus in action, and he has been nothing but helpful and gentlemanly toward her. A later event brings back some of CeCe's memories, although it is possible she is projecting her anxieties, the memories might be false. She pushes Derrick away, but he still steps in to save her later. Can two people with such history find love? To tell you the truth, I don't care. I'm not saying Ramsay doesn't show a bit of promise, but I don't recommend this. Others obviously disagree. Out of 21 reviews at Amazon, the majority are 5 stars, the remainder 4, but I would have a hard time rating it as high as 3.5. Then again, I'm not a twenty-year-old woman, who is still thinking like an eighteen-year old, so what do I know?
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