Two grief stricken fathers, gang of biker boys, musicians, gay bars, missing girl, and one big shot calling all the shots. This story is a whirlwind of grief, violence, murder, and unlikely friendships. Buddy Lee and Ike are determined to find the truth of why their sons, who were married to each other, were killed in cold blood. They encounter rough characters along the way. Have to fight off many people, some of them many times. The story and the characters are very well developed. Though I was not a fan of all of the gore, it was on theme with the story line. I give it 3.5-4 stars

This type of book isn’t my usual jam; it’s more in lines with books that my husband would read, and I almost didn’t pick it up because of it. However, because of the fantastic reviews I had seen, I had to give it a try, and I am so glad I did! I LOVED this book. It has moved to the top spot of books that I have read thus far this year. The development of the relationship between Ike and Buddy Lee, who are similar in so many ways yet very different, was beautiful to watch unfold. Grief can unite people in a way little else can. Perhaps my favorite thing about this novel is the way both Buddy Lee and Ike came to terms with their mistreatment of their sons based on their sexual orientation. The growth in this area was so poignantly beautiful, and you can’t help but wish they could have developed this insight before it was too late. Race was another significant theme that was tackled, and acknowledged the difficulties that members of both communities face. This book became rampagey AF, and at times it was downright gruesome. It served to highlight the pain that both men were experiencing, and though it was difficult at times, it served an almost beautiful purpose. The author, SA Cosby, has an amazing mastery of words, and I am most definitely going to look into his backlist. I was provided a copy of the audio galley courtesy of @netgalley and @macmillan.audio . I would like to make a request that the narrator, @realadamlw, read to me nightly-his rich voice added so much to this book, and he did a great job with giving each character a unique voice (Buddy Lee’s was my favorite). If you have an opportunity to listen to the audio edition of this book, even if you read the physical copy, you should take it!

This book was amazing. I cannot say enough good things about it. It took a little bit to get into the storyline and adapt to the way the characters talked, but once I did I flew through the rest of the book. I think I read it in a day.

Ike and Buddy Lee could not be more different, yet they have so much in common. Both ex-cons, both have gay sons who happen to be married to each other. When their suns are gunned down in the street and the cops trail goes cold, Ike and Buddy Lee take matters into their own hands. In a fast paced story that keeps you on the edge of your seat, you see what two fathers will do for their sons.

Wow. This book. It was so different than I expected it to be. This book is graphic and detailed with some intense imagery (i.e. murder, etc. ) but covers so many important social topics. I think this book was unexpected but did a beautiful job putting all the themes together.

Wow. I am blown away by this book (no pun intended). It’s gritty, it’s visceral. It’s brutally violent. It also has some pretty important things to say about race and about letting people be who they are. And most of all, about grief and love and regret. This book is powerful and it’ll be with me for a long time.

I was not a big fan of the audiobook narrator, however. He seemed to pause after every fourth word and it was distracting.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the free review copy. Oh

I have told everyone I speak to about this book. My store added it to our must read shelf and have put in our mystery book lovers surprise. I hope he writes many more books.

I love the writing of S.A. Cosby so it was a no-brainer to sign up to listen to Razorblade Tears. (I also purchased a print copy through the Book of the Month Club).

The story has a very interesting premise: Ike and Buddy Lee are an unlikely pair. They're two fathers from different backgrounds who come together to avenge the death of their gay sons who were murdered.

Throughout the book, they make peach with their sons' homosexuality...and even befriend a transgender woman. This is story is about modern-day love -- only tied up with a ton of violence and a whodunit plot.

While I enjoyed parts of this story -- the friendship, the reckoning as fathers as it relates to the LGBTQ community -- it was the brutal violence that made me want to fast-forward through several parts of the story.

The narrator, Adam Lazarre-White, did a wonderful job. You may remember him from his work narrating Cosby's amazing best-seller, Blacktop Wasteland. Lazarre-White is also the voice behind other great books, including: Saving Ruby Kind, A Most Beautiful Thing, and The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. So if you're interested in this book, I recommend the audio version.

Thanks to Macmillan Audio for a listener's copy via the NetGalley app.

“A good father, a good man, loves the people that love his children.”

“How many times had Isaiah…wept, until he found the strength to live as he was meant to live. As a man who so much more than who he slept with. Who had a father who refused to see him as anything more than a disappointment.”

A black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance. When two ex cons band together to avenge the murders of their gay sons, you are in for one wild ride.

👏🏻 All 👏🏻 of 👏🏻 the 👏🏻 stars👏🏻. This is one of those books that makes you ƒҽҽӀ things. All
of the things. This book reminded me a lot of Winter Counts (exceptional) and We Begin At The End (also exceptional) in the sense of sucking you in and making you want to cease to exist in the real world for a moment because you can’t leave the world that’s on the page, or in your ears, as it were.

Narrated by Adam Lazarre-White, this audio was one of the best I’ve listened to in recent memory. His voice is so smooth and he brings grit and strength to the characters, but also heart. I could feel the fathers’ hearts softening towards their sons and the story progressed.

I can’t recommend this one enough. The story. The setting. The subject matter. Just everything. Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, the author and Flatiron Books for this ALC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. This book is so much more than a crime thriller. You can feel the grief of these two Dads and not only for the Loss of their Sons but for their mistakes as fathers. I have not read Black Top wasteland by S.A.Cosby. but I now have to put it on my TBR pile!

I can definitely see this book on the big screen. Great protagonists, Great antagonists, lots of drama, heart strings being pulled, laughter and lots and lots of Action. Never a dull moment!

I don’t think this book is for everyone as it has a lot of violence. If you aren’t too sensitive to that I would definitely highly recommend this book! The writing is excellent. The book is about Vengeance, forgiveness, acceptance, and redemption. A must MUST Read! I will definitely be putting this book in peoples hands! On so many levels WOW!!!

Ike is a black ex-con who is on the straight and narrow path, living respectably as the owner of a landscaping business. Buddy Lee is white, a racist ex-con who seeks escape in the bottle.

They have little in common except as fathers to their gay sons, Derek and Isaiah, who were married. Their sons were viciously murdered, execution style, leaving behind their 3-year-old daughter Arianna.

When the case grows cold, Ike and Buddy Lee band together to seek vengeance for their sons’ murder. It’s too late to atone for their homophobia and their failures as fathers, but they can avenge their sons’ deaths.

As they travel a path to learn what happened to their sons, they both embark on a journey of introspection and inner growth. They have many discussions about racism, sexuality, prejudice and regrets for the past. Witty dialogue and pithy one-liners balance the heavy themes.

You will need a strong stomach for this one. The violence is graphic, often sickeningly so, and the body count is high. The conversations between Buddy and Ike sometimes sound like a “woke” monologue, and many of the characters are stereotypical, but I appreciated that the author tackled prejudice and LGBQT themes in such a unique way. I loved Ike and Buddy Lee’s redemptive journey from prejudice to love. Ike and Buddy Lee are anti-heroes whose methods can’t be condoned, but whose hearts are in the right places. Finally.

*The audiobook was flawlessly narrated by Adam Lazarre-White.

Super amazing southern thriller! All the stars. Not gonna bore you with a long review, but I highly recommend the audiobook. It was a total immersive experience for me with the arc and audiobook. Loved it through and through even more than Blacktop Wasteland. Welcome to my autobuy list author Cosby.

Thank you Macmillan vis Netgalley for the advanced copies.

From Instagram review link below:

Razorblade Tears by S.E. Cosby

S.E. Cosby follows up last year’s splendid debut Blacktop Wasteland—top 5 on my Best-of list—with one that’s ante-up more: more steroidal, action-packed, more anger, more regret. The premise is Pentecostal: a young, gay, and interracial couple is murdered, and the boys’ two ex-con dads search for the killer(s). The black-and-white Southern dads—Ike “Riot” Randolph and Buddy Lee Jenkins—make for an engaging team as they slide from once bigoted, non-accepting adults into the body-strewn land of redemption. The action scenes are cinematic while the dialogue crackles with non-cliched Bogart-esque repartee. When Buddy Lee drives his truck full speed into a house to catch a villain, he tells Ike, “My only mistake was taking a left at the kitchen.”

The question has now been answered. Would Cosby be our next Richard Wright or Walter Mosley? Crime writing is his calling.

Excellent audio performance makes a compelling mystery thriller even better.
I reviewed the print version for NPR Books.
Opening:
Reading Razorblade Tears is a visceral full-body experience, a sharp jolt to the heart, and a treat for the senses. S. A. Cosby's moody southern thriller marries the skillful action and plotting of Lee Child with the atmosphere and insight of Attica Locke.

At the center of the storm are two battle-scarred, middle-aged men who've served hard time — one Black, one white, both desperate to get some rough justice for their murdered sons.

Full review available via NPR.org

I received a complimentary audiobook copy of RAZORBLADE TEARS by S.A. Cosby thanks to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley.

RAZORBLADE TEARS begins with the funeral of two young men, Isaiah and Derek, who have been brutally murdered because they were gay, because they were a mixed race couple, or likely both. Their fathers Ike and Buddy Lee come together because they want answers and don’t trust the police to solve the crime.

Ike has kept his anger and violence in check since he got out of jail 15 years earlier, but the senseless violence that claimed his son has flared it back up. Buddy Lee has a criminal past as well, just one of the points of contention causing distance between him and his son, and he has the contacts needed to help the men start to seek out answers. Together they learn a lot about themselves and their guilt over their failure to fully accept their sons.

This story sucked me in right away and held on! Both Ike and Buddy Lee are very compelling characters. Neither of them had acceptance of their sons’ being gay while their sons were alive and the grief over this failure eats at both of them now that their sons are gone. They can’t fix that now, but they can seek out the people who killed them and find revenge. Along the way they learn a lot about each other and about the children that they lost.

This book does not pull many punches and there are major trigger warnings for violence and body horror. Still, that all did make sense in the frame of their rage at themselves and at the people who had so much hatred that they would murder two young men.

I did a bit of reading in print, but mostly read this one on audio. I thought the narrator did a fantastic job, so I would absolutely recommend that medium!

This is a multi-layered crime story with well-developed characters. The emotional depth and self-awareness of each grieving father adds weight to a traditional "search for the killer" themed book. The character growth that occurs within the context of the violent and aggressive hunt is unexpected and fresh. I stepped outside of my reading genre with this one and I absolutely do not regret it.

Razorblade Tears is, quite simply, genre fiction at its best.

As Kirkus put it: "Coming from the right author, genre fiction has a rare capacity to touch on any number of big ideas: love, death, hatred, violence, freedom, bondage, and redemption, to name just a few. Cosby's latest fits the bill."

This book's a gritty mystery that was engaging and heartbreaking. It has well-drawn characters and plot and action, which is to say, it has it all.

Ike and Buddy Lee come together when their sons (married to each other) are murdered. Both fathers are ex-cons who regret the relationship they had with their son when he was alive.

The audiobook is excellent; I really liked how the narrator's voice set the tone. It was well-paced at 2x. (Though I might just have sped up to 2.5x toward the end!)

Love this book. It goes into the book with one of the fathers not ready to support his sons life as his son marries his husband. As the book goes on opinions change and the two fathers join up together to find out who killed their sons. This book kept my attention and was hard to put down. I am looking forward to reading more books by this author.

WOW.
This so isn’t my type of book but I flew through it!

Razorblade Tears is violent and a little gory and action-packed. It’s also a timely, poignant, and important book. It’s a revenge story that reads like an odd couple type action movie and if someone told me that I wouldn’t have picked it up, but I’m glad I did.

THIS BOOK! MY NEW FAVORITE AND YES I'M YELLING! This is the second book I read from S. A. Cosby and he's now my new favorite author and auto-buy author. RAZORBLADE TEARS is an amazing book that gives a great representation of LGBTQIA+. It's full of action and grit and can bring you to tears. HIGHLY RECOMMEND! Might be my favorite book of 2021.

This was a heartbreaker of a novel. I really liked the perspective of two fathers who did not support their gay sons lifestyle and sexual choices.
When the two sons are brutally murdered the fathers go on a vigilante killing spree to uncover who killed the,
Along the way they face the truth about their relationship with their sons and the lack of love they showed them. The book is really a social commentary on sexuality and how people all have dark kept secrets. The true hero’s are the ones who try to live their life out in the open, but aren’t able to sue to prejudices. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this book, but it was a strong story with an important message.