I am someone that can never forget anything. Sure, I can move on, accept that change and redemption is possible, wish the best for someone, but I will not forget. So with that in mind, the question of revenge is a really interesting one for me. What does it mean to not forgive someone? What does redemption looks like? And who decides how justice is being served?

Razorblade Tears has quite a hook - two dads, both blatantly homophobic towards their son while they were alive, now looking to avenge them in death with the only way they know: violence. It does dress a bleak, but realistic outlook from the get-go: the police will not do much when the crime happened to a queer interracial couple. Ike and Buddy Lee are left alone to simmer in their anger, to the world, but towards themselves too: they were supposed to have more time. Things were supposed to get better, their relationship with theirs sons could have changed except now it never will. So you take that anger and you turn it outward, to hell with the rest of it all.

Ike and Buddy Lee are clearly not meant to be lovable heroes. I think Cosby makes it quite clear from the get-go, the death of their sons is the absolute beginning of their journey. Witnessing them realising head-on the homophobia their sons had to live through was one of the highlight of the book for me. I enjoyed how Cosby chose to weave those moments throughout the narrative, piling them on and on until it became impossible for Ike and Buddy Lee to ignore them. The changes they experience as the story continues felt believable, even if it did not shed them in a better light. Ike and Buddy Lee are also not a monolith - Ike's experience as a black man shaped him in different ways than Buddy Lee's white nationalist upbringing, and Cosby is not shy in bringing that up. It was a great character exploration than to see their different self-journeys, and them coming to rely on one another.

I think where Cosby lost me a bit, and through no fault of his own, is that I am not a thriller reader. This is absolutely a me issue (if you can call it an issue). Thrillers, as all genres, have their own codes, and Ike and Buddy Lee's was never one that would attract me. In the end, I kept wondering to myself if this war path was what the sons, Isiah and Derek, would have wanted. Is it really justice, if you are deciding of the punishment for the sake of the dead? Ike and Buddy Lee's thirst for revenge was a major part of the book, and yet became the one that interested me the least. Cosby does comment on that violence, but the story is still a thriller at heart, and so we need to be keep on the edge of our seats. It didn't help that the villains were also too cartoonish to the point of feeling like a parody of themselves, which was a shame because Cosby clearly knows how to write complex characters. The side characters were fine? I think their downfall was that I wanted to spend more time with them than with the protagonists. Shoutout to Jazzy, you deserve the world.

I'm glad I got out of my comfort zone to read it (PageBound Readalongs ily 💞), but I'll also know that this story will not stay with me. It's not a shame though, I know it has already found its public.