Dark Needs at Nights Edge

by Kresley Cole

Was I prepared to fall head over heels for a love story between a ghost and a vampire? Absolutely not. Did it happen anyway? Absolutely yes.

Let me set the stage: Néomi, a once-glamorous ballerina brutally murdered in the 1920s, has been haunting her old home for the last eighty years, bored to the brink of madness. No one can see her. No one can hear her. Her only companions? Eavesdropped conversations and yellowing newspapers.

Enter Conrad Wroth, former vampire slayer, now reluctantly turned vampire, and completely unhinged. After centuries of blood-soaked vengeance and rage, he's shackled in Néomi's abandoned manor for a forced detox orchestrated by his brothers. He’s furious, feral… until he sees her.

What follows is a story that should be impossible, a ghost and a vampire falling into something tender, aching, and beautifully raw. "Dark Needs at Night’s Edge" isn’t just a romance. It’s about redemption. About healing from deep, ugly trauma. About choosing connection when the world has offered nothing but pain.

Also? It’s hot. The tension is electric, the banter snappy, the emotional payoff so satisfying it hurts in the best way. And Nix? She’s absolutely unhinged and somehow even more iconic here, a walking chaos gremlin oracle you’ll never forget.

This book isn't just a standout in the Immortals After Dark series, it's the book I tell people to look forward to when they’re diving into IAD for the first time. Always five stars. No hesitation.

Now, a note to longtime fans: If you're revisiting the newly released versions, you might notice something… different. There are edits. Subtle at first, updated pop culture nods, tweaked time references, but enough to shift the nostalgic tone. I miss the original quirks. The Crazy Frog ringtone vibes. The campy, unapologetic timestamp of it all. These characters lived through specific eras. Felt shaped by them. Moving the timeline forward makes me wonder: what else shifts in the process?

I don’t know if these changes are coming from Kresley herself or from the publisher trying to modernize the series for a newer audience, but they leave a bittersweet taste. Thank the gods for the original audiobooks, still preserved in Robert Petkoff’s incredible narration. They hold the story exactly as I first fell in love with it, weird, wonderful, and wholly its own.

So yes, I will guard my original copies like precious relics. And I’ll keep shouting from the rooftops: this book? This book is magic.