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Dark Needs At Night’s Edge

Kresley Cole

Published 2008                   368 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

A raven-haired temptress of the dark...
Néomi Laress, a famous ballerina from a past century, became a phantom the night she was murdered. Imbued with otherworldly powers but invisible to the living, she haunts her beloved home, scaring away trespassers - until she encounters a ruthless immortal even more terrifying than Néomi herself.

A vampire warrior consumed by madness...
To prevent him from harming others, Conrad Wroth's brothers imprison him in an abandoned manor. But there, a female only he can see seems determined to drive him further into madness. The exquisite creature torments him with desire, leaving his body racked with lust and his soul torn as he finds himself coveting her for his own.

How far will he go to claim her?
Yet even if Conrad can win Néomi, evil still surrounds her. Once he returns to the brutality of his past to protect her, will he succumb to the dark needs seething inside him?

The Review

Dark Needs At Night’s Edge is the fourth full length novel in Kresley Coles’s amazing Immortals After Dark paranormal romance series.  There is some cross over of characters from previous novels in Dark Needs At Night’s Edge but all the books in this series are stand alone romances, so you don’t need to have read the prior novels in this series if you want to start reading this one.

At first glance, an incorporeal ghost and a blood-crazed killer vampire may not seem like ideal romance novel material.  Questions like, “How can you have a satisfying romance when the heroine doesn’t even have a body?” and “How can an insane killer vampire be a romance hero?” immediately spring to mind but fear not, the author more than manages to turn this unlikely romantic scenario into a first rate romance.

Conrad and Néomi’s characters work well together.  Conrad is a strong and powerful vampire yet he has been driven mad by his bloodlust and must fight to regain his sanity.  He is the perfect romance hero, strong and sexy yet vulnerable.  Néomi is a ghost with a lust for life.  Her short mortal life was joyfully spent in the pursuit of fun and happiness.  Conrad has known nothing of joy or fun – his mortal life was brutally hard and his immortal life even harder.   Néomi has her work cut out when it comes to bringing fun back into Conrad’s existence.

The first half of the novel sees Conrad and Néomi thrown together when Conrad’s vampire brothers imprison him in Néomi’s home.  They leave him there to go cold turkey on his blood addiction in the hopes that this will help him regain his sanity. 

Conrad is the first person in all of the eighty years Néomi has been a ghost who is actually able to see her. Once she manages to convince Conrad that she isn’t just another crazy hallucination she begins to keep him company and helps him to master his rage and bloodlust with her lively yet calming presence.  This time spent together allows their relationship and characters to develop without too many distractions.

The second half of the novel brings in the demons, Valkyries and other creatures of the Lore that regular readers of this series will already be familiar with.  The pace of the novel then goes into overdrive as Conrad and Néomi fight for the future together that they wish to have.

Kresley Cole proves herself to be at the top of her game (if not something of an alchemist) as she takes the unlikely elements of an incorporeal spirit and a mad vampire and turns them into paranormal romance gold.  Trust me, if you like paranormal romance you want to read this book - you’re going to love it!

A word of caution though – the fast pacing of this novel makes it nearly impossible to put down once you start reading it.  Meals will go uncooked, dirty laundry unwashed and chores fall by the way side.  Take the phone off the hook or pity the hapless telemarketer who calls and interrupts your reading… I think you get the general idea…

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