A review by griffinraynor
Video Nasties by Duncan Ralston

1.0

I got a few pages into the first story before getting annoyed with the repeated 'male author describing breasts' phenomenon. The first time was regarding a trapped, tied up girl in her underwear who was some kind of ghost or vision, and the second time was about a grieving widow who had come to get flowers from the main characters' shop for her husbands funeral. As soon as the narration went into describing the male main character's desire to have rough sex with this woman right then and there I backed out and deleted this book from my library. I believe that this story was leading up to a reveal that the main male character had been possessed by something that caused him to be violently sexual, as the inciting event for the story is him purchasing a van that his wife thinks of as a 'rape van' and the ghost girl he sees is mosy likely a victim of sexual assault. It's very possible that the other stories in this collection have merit, and it's even possible that this one itself deserves more of a chance, but it creeped me out in the exact wrong way and this being the first in the collection did not bode well. When I read horror I'm looking for creepy ghosts and maybe some serial killers, not some cheap rape-as-drama with a side of oversexualization of 90%+ of the female characters. If you're considering this collection you deserve to know going in about this potentially alienating content.