Love and Other Cures for the Recently Undead
By: H.J. Ramsay
Publication Date: October 6th 2026
Genres: New Adult, Post-Apocalyptic, Romance
Add to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/247986241-love-and-other-cures-for-the-recently-undead
Synopsis:
CeCe Campbell wakes on the asphalt of a mall parking lot with two missing years and a body that no longer feels like her own. Infected with the Kill Virus on her 18th birthday, she’s among the first to be cured.
Rehabilitation teaches CeCe how to walk, how to speak, how to exist in a world rebuilding itself, but it cannot return what she lost. Her mother is dead. Her brother is missing. And the last memory before the dark is a bite she cannot escape.
When CeCe unexpectedly meets Derrick—the boy who infected her—she’s torn between anger and a strange, undeniable connection. Derrick doesn’t remember what he did. CeCe does, and the truth of that moment is something he’ll never get. Not when he already took everything from her.
But if there’s to be life after the cure, CeCe will have to unwind the past, face what happened the night that bound them together, and decide if love and forgiveness can heal wounds deeper than the ones left by the undead.
Love and Other Cures for the Recently Undead is a haunting post-apocalyptic love story about guilt, survival, and choosing connection in a world where nothing can be undone.
Purchase:
Amazon: https://link.amazon/B0hw40HLT
Once her hair starts to cling to her face and the dampness grows stickier through her sweatshirt, she checks her phone.
It’s been an hour.
Something must be happening at the CAVE. She wonders what. Her thumb hovers over the call button, then she changes her mind.
Her house isn’t far. Only two miles or a little more. She used to run that at least three times a week. But now she doubts she’d be able to run half a block without getting winded.
As she stands there, the open space presses against her. She’s been outside longer than she has in months. Clutching her GED study guide and notebook, she goes down the stairs and turns for home.
Trash blows down the streets and clogs the gutters. A wallet, a stained baby sock caught in the grate. It’s quiet and still early, but no one is out.
There used to be joggers, people walking their dogs, but now it’s empty. No one stays out longer than necessary. They either closet themselves in their homes or in the community centers for those who have no surviving family.
It’s against the rules to be alone. Because of the suicides.
Her dad talked about them when he didn’t think she was listening. They thought the cure would be enough, that people would rush to rebuild. Instead, suicides spread faster than the virus ever had. This wasn’t a world anyone wanted to return to. Something CeCe understood.
The Department of Rehabilitation became their solution, its aim to get everything and everyone back to normal. The No One Alone Rule was meant to keep the constant reminder of the loss and trauma in check. Only there aren’t enough people to enforce it. Rules read better than they work.
CeCe slows when she sees a man watching her from his front window. He doesn’t move, doesn’t wave, doesn’t blink. She wonders if he’ll report her for being by herself, but that would take effort, so she doubts it. Existing is hard enough.
She continues past the man in the window. Each block car- ries her farther from Franklin and the illusion of normal. Here, mailboxes stand empty, their flags rusted in place, before overgrown yards.
Her calves scream at her as she approaches Ed’s MiniMart. It’s the furthest she’s walked since before the Infection. She thinks about pulling out her phone to try her dad again when movement catches her attention. She thinks it’s a cat, but it’s only a plastic grocery bag scraping against the asphalt. One thing she hasn’t seen much of since returning: animals. At night, a lone bark sometimes cuts through the silence. She wonders if the dog is okay, or just trying to survive like everyone else.
A sound makes her freeze mid-step. Her heart thumps in her chest as she listens. Chuckling. Someone’s chuckling. She glances over at Ed’s where a Sanitation Department van sits outside, but the others that had been there earlier are gone. The outside windows have already been replaced, and a fresh coat of paint covers “Repent” even though the outline is still visible.
The laughter comes again, followed by low, animated voices.
She heads toward the store and peers inside. The shelves have been righted and pushed against a far wall and the counter cleared, but there’s no one.
An excited whoop makes her jump, nearly knocking her face into the glass. She moves along the front until she can see down the side of the building.
Three guys are huddled over a tablet. Their hazmat suits are unzipped, the arms hanging loose around their waists. They look so normal, as if none of this had ever touched them.
Her insides burn with anger, with jealousy. For her, there is no coming back. Not with the bite, a reminder she doesn’t belong.
She’s about to turn around when one of them glances up at her, a sloppy grin still on his face. A jolt of familiarity thrums down her spine. Her mouth opens and shuts as his smile fades. She knows him…from that night.
He stares at her in confusion.
“Hey.” He stands. “Hey. Do I know you?”
His friends abandon the tablet, turning their gazes on her.
CeCe takes a step backward. Then another.
His dark eyes hit her like a bruise that’s never healed. The last time she’d seen them, they were fevered with infection.
It’s him. The college boy who bit her.
About H.J. Ramsay
HJ Ramsay holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is an award-winning author. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Gold Man Review, a West Coast literary journal, and has a background in Psychology and Criminal Justice with dual bachelor’s degrees. Passionate about storytelling that explores the human experience, she crafts narratives that blend emotion, imagination, and depth. When she’s not writing or editing, she enjoys diving into the worlds of speculative fiction and literary fiction alike.
Blitz-Wide Giveaway (INT) Ends October 15th
Prize: A print or audible copy of Love and Other Cures + a tote with swag
Link to Enter Giveaway: https://gleam.io/u3VJq/love-and-other-cures-for-the-recently-undead-blitz
My obsession with reading started over 30+ years ago when I went to my first Scholastic Book Fair and found R.L. Stine's Fear Street series. Later, I came across Anne Rice's novels at my public library when I was fourteen when my obsession with vampires started. I was the girl who preferred to be a vampire over a princess any day. My husband says I would leave him a heartbeat for a vampire that looked like Spike or Angel (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries. (It's true, though, and he's accepted it.)
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