DNF @ 35%. Yeah, this has confirmed that I’m not enthusiastic enough about science to read a book this large about it. Every time Ryland hashes out a formula I feel like I’m in year 10 science (derogatory).

I think science fiction and science nerds will love this more than me, but I’ll just watch the film to see how it all ends.

Revenge thriller isn't a genre I'd typically pick up -- but after reading Razorblade Tears, I need to read more!

Whenever I read a book where the main character's are mourning people who died before the book started, I often feel detached from their grief. As if I needed to know these characters to feel something towards their absence. Not this time. SA Crosby tapped into the right elements to make me miss Isiah and Derek throughout the whole book. I was weeping over the last pages.

I can understand why this book isn't for everyone. From the synopsis, you'll know that the 2 lead characters, Ike Randolf and Buddy Lee Jenkins, are homophobic fathers who chose to disown (and often abuse) their children because their sons were gay men. This set up is unappealing, trust me, I know, and it's a LOT to read from the perspective of 2 men who made the wrong decisions about their sons over and over again.

I think the reason I was able to find value in this story is because of the amount of men in my community who remind me of Ike Randolf. Men who are capable of being good fathers, but spoil it with their outdated and harmful beliefs towards "manhood" and love. Through Ike, I saw these kind of men take a journey towards realising how wrong they were. Ike was facing himself in the aftermath of a relationship he soured and destroyed himself. (The conversation in the barbershop is so familiar to me it hurts!). I also thought the author was alluding to the relationship between a man's abuse in prison and how it shapes his homophobia, but he didn't delve into this beyond a moment where Ike suppresses an awful memory.

The biggest victims in this story will always be Isiah and Derek. There's nothing that their father's can do to return them and salvage their relationships, and Ike and Buddy Lee make it known that between them and their sons, the wrong people were killed.

I appreciate Cosby for taking on such a unique story. I don’t think you have to like either of the main characters as they are written as anti heroes trying to make the sourest lemonade out of the lemons they plucked from life’s tree. I appreciate this story for Isiah and Derek and the glimpses of the dads they didn’t get to have due to both of their fathers’ ignorance.

It would have been so much easier for these 2 men to have loved their sons properly. Realistically, though, they are a lot of people who don't and this is a story that doesn't shy away from that. I do know that, if their sons had been killed after a lifetime of loving them correctly, Ike and Buddy Lee would have made the same decisions. LOVE YOUR CHILDREN TODAY, THOUGH!! Tomorrow is not promised.