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Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby, a thriller with some hot topics that will make you uncomfortable. Did Cosby live up to the hype with this one, or was it an angry rant?

Spoiler-Free Plotline

Razorblade Tears takes place in a small, rural town in Virginia where we follow two character perspectives: Ike and Buddy Lee. Ike is a black father who has been out of prison for 15 years, and has found out his son, Isaiah was murdered.

Buddy Lee is a white ex-con, who found out his son, Derek, was also murdered. Ike and Buddy have been brought together at their funerals as the two sons were married. Buddy Lee has been more estranged with his son due to his prejudice of the LGBTQ+ community.

When brought together, the two fathers feel the police have not taken the death of their boys seriously, so they take matters into their own hands.

Throughout the story, we see issues being brought up: racism, bigotry, and child abuse. What I found interesting about this story is the two fathers start to work through their narrow-minded ideologies with the LGBTQ+ community, however there are comparisons of issues. It is brought up often that “being black is harder than being gay”

We also meet new people along the way that bring up hard realities, betrayal, and conflicted feelings. It was always hard to tell who we could trust and who we couldn’t.

My Takes

I went into this book blind, I didn’t look at the back or see any reviews on it. I mainly saw it in a quick scroll through tiktok that classified it as a “unforgettable thriller”. That was enough for me to say “alright, bet”.

This book met my expectations for that. I ended up doing some more research and S.A. Cosby is just one of those authors that doesn’t seem to miss. In this, I had a fun journey in finishing this book. The characters were very grasping and seemingly realistic to the conflict throughout the story. Decisions the characters made seemed rather logical for what the character’s mindsets and perspectives were. Not to necessarily say the decisions made were logical, but you could understand how the character was thinking in that moment.

Decisions like “what is worse” and “what is right” were constantly challenged throughout the book, and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of character development in a standalone. S.A. Cosby proved you can write a detailed, character driven, emotional plotline without the need for thousands of pages or multiple books.

Something that I really appreciate about this book is that I didn’t really know how to feel about the book because I was uncomfortable for a lot of it. I was uncomfortable by hot topic conflicts, bigotry, etc. I felt like the characters were very sturdy in their opinions and closed off at first. It felt like the only answer was violence and vengeance. However, after some character development  and these new characters being introduced, it became clear that the whole point was to feel uncomfortable.

This was one of the most memorable thrillers I have read in 2025 and I will cherish it.