
Member Reviews

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.

Conrad and Naomi are perfect!! I haven’t read about many phantoms, and I love the lore that KC chose to bring Neomi to such haunting life. Conrad has been imprisoned in the abandoned home she “haunts” after her death, and thought they can’t touch, they really get to it 😅 I love seeing these strong, brooding males get blooded by the wisps of females such as Neomi, who doesn’t even know what she is. It’s all just perfect.

What do you get when you cross a dead woman trapped in an incorporeal form and an undead man who may or may not have tapped the vein a little too hard? Smoking hot chemistry and a wonderful journey to discovering that something matters more than power. I'm obsessed with Dark Needs at Nights Edge. It is my all time favorite IAD book because Neomi & Conrad are so good together. I love that Conrad is just a little disturbed and Neomi is like a beast tamer. His little ballerina has him wrapped around her finger, whether he realizes it or not and Neomi would give Conrad the moon and all the stars because someone FINALLY sees her. The story is incredible, and I love the over arcing plot line that you see through the entirety of the series, the snippets of previous and future couples, and then seeing pivotal points in the plot from all different angles. Absolutely obsessed. A million stars.

This is another book I've read MULTIPLE times - and it's another favorite in the series (although, let's be honest - every book in this series is a favorite of mine).
Néomi is the star of this show. She's everything I love in a heroine: strong, stubborn, intelligent, confident, yet still tender... and an absolute MINX. #goals - And the way our girl lays down and enforces boundaries with her man? YES. Could be the switch in me, but watching a strong beauty tame her beast without snuffing out his fire... again, #goals I have such a tremendous appreciation for her as a character, too - more and more than before with each new reread. I admire that woman so damn much - her confidence, her grit, her compassion, her sense of dignity and self respect... I will never not love this book.
I really enjoyed Conrad, too. So tortured, that one. And a virgin hero, too! His and Néomi's chemistry was perfection and his growth was EXTREMELY satisfying.
Mariketa & Nïx are some of my absolute faves, though. Also, I forgot how hysterical Nïx is in this one! Multiple instances (all flooded with exquisite foreshadowing for future books, by the way) where her dialogue had me cackling. Nïx may be a tad mad, but she is still clever and witty and brilliant and even slightly terrifying... I adore her.
Easily one of my favorite books in the series... and I genuinely love every book in this series. Not one of them is a dud for me.

This man (insane blood-deprived Estonian vampire) was down so bad for her (smoking hot phantom ballerina) ya love to see it.
The Wroth vampire brothers have some of my favorite books and if I’m correct at least 2 are virgin heroes soooo that tracks. Néomi and Conrad remain such an electric couple even after three rereads.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery books for this advanced copy!
Look.. was I expecting to fall in love with a book about a ghost and a vampire? No, but yet here we are.
Néomi has been dead for eighty years and is getting really tired of not having anyone to talk to. After being brutally murdered in her home in the 1920s, she has watched people move in and out of her home with only being able to read newspapers and listen in on conversations.
Conrad never wanted to be a vampire and spent his mortal life hunting down people like him. He has spent three hundred years tracking down his brothers and exacting his revenge on them.
Turns out, revenge is actually Conrad being chained up against his will in Néomi's home.
In order to get him to change his mind about his brothers, Conrad's brothers have decided to keep him here until he gets better. Conrad is against this idea, that is, until he sees Néomi.
This was a beautiful story about redemption, love, and moving on from a traumatic past. This series is just *chef's kiss* and I cannot wait to read the rest of the series!

So listen up everyone. This is a book where the ghost of a burlesque dancer-turned-ballerina falls in love with the blood-junkie virgin vampire detoxing in her haunted house. Also he can't get a boner because that's how vampirism works in Immortals After Dark. There's a lot of plot stuff but it really doesn't matter as long as you buy into Conrad and Neomi's love story.
👻They have non-corporeal sexytimes (just like phone sex but weirder)!
🃏They play blackjack and the stakes are a Q&A about their lurid pasts!
💃🏻SPOILER ALERT: She eventually decides to give ballet lessons to all the poor widdle baby demons and valkyries who can't attend regular classes with mortals!
Do you need to read the other books in the series first? You might get confused about the Lore and why vampires can't get boners, but honestly, that's all extra stuff anyway. Enjoy.
This objective review is based on a complimentary copy of the novel.

When I reread IAD last year, I actually started with Kiss of the Demon King, skipping the Wroth brothers. I recalled feeling inundated by Wroth brothers in the early parts of the series (there *are* 4 of them, after all) because you get them all so early on, and you get parts of the same story from different perspectives in each book. I'm glad this time when I picked up Dark Needs at Nights Edge, it was to start here. I found myself significantly more comfortable with enjoying the romance on this reread rather than trying to grasp at plot threads, in large part because I've read most of the series twice through.
Conrad is a virgin hero for valid reasons (he joined a religious order at a young age and swore off women...then lived several hundred vampire years), and as a vampire discovering his bride and having her become and anchor for him amidst his bloodthirsty insanity is the hottest/sweetest character arc. I love Neomi's stance as independent woman/ghost, and watching her learn to rely on someone else because they both want it is also immensely satisfying.
The shower scene remains one of the hottest I've ever read: tension and pining, chef's kiss.
I think this is a really good IAD entry point, as there is some worldbuilding, but also better consent than in earlier books. Conrad has possessive tendencies, but he's vampire possessive, and in this case really sweet and protective, rather than scarily possessive.

I have heard many great things about Kresley Cole and her unique spin on the urban paranormal romance genre. After reading this book, I can concur that those speculations were correct. The heated tension between the main characters in this unique supernatural backdrop will keep you immersed in the story until the late hours of the night. Usually I don't like the push-and-pull between love interests, but the author wrote their dynamic in such a way that leaves you eagerly anticipating what will be in store for their romance. Some parts of this story did feel a little more geared towards young adults, but very few throughout the plot. Otherwise, I would recommend this book to any reader who loves the urban paranormal romance genre.

This was so good. Oddly, the first I have read in the series, but I WILL be going back and reading them all. Her being a ghost? Genius, so fun.

Conrad Wroth is the brooding mmc of my dream! Neomi, a phantom in New Orleans, is used to protecting her home as a haunt but when Conrad comes to her home she ends up farlling in love.

Dark Needs at Night's Edge remains one of my all-time favorite books in the Immortals After Dark series by Kresley Cole.
Dark Needs finds a vampire and a ghost trapped in a mansion together. Not only is my favorite character Nix next level hilarious in this book, but the hero and heroine both have really fantastic, emotional journeys to their HEA. There's incredible sexual tension between them, fun dirty talk, and some brief heartache. It truly has it all. For new to IAD readers, this is a book that I always tell them to look forward to. It will forever be a five star book to me.
As a note to my fellow series fans: In rereads of these new releases, I'm noticing some updates that are being made to the text. They mostly seem small, changing older references to newer ones and things like that. It honestly makes me a little sad. I always loved how grounded these books felt in a specific Crazy Frog ringtone-era. It felt fun and campy and nostalgic to me because Kresley was so unapologetically about it. Also I wonder if this means characters' ages are being updated? Like certain characters are older than others - and i feel like if you create characters with the idea that they've lived through certain time periods and would be affected by those times - then this changes that if the book is suddenly set further into the future. I do think that worldbuilding edits to fix plotholes (which naturally happen in long series where no one could've predicted in book one where things needed to go) make so much sense. But the other edits feel a bit like they're taking the personality out of the book in a way I don't love.
I don't know if this is an author choice, or a publisher choice based on wanting to market the books to a newer audience without them feeling specifically dated. Either way it's one that leaves me feeling a bit disappointed and makes me grateful that I also have the audiobooks (narrated y the incomparable Robert Petkoff) to keep the story as I first read and loved it. And it makes me more invested in keeping my original copies of the books, rather than getting the updated releases.