Dark Needs at Night's Edge
4 Stars

Synopsis
Turned into a vampire against his will, Conrad Wroth has spent 300 years fighting the bloodlust and memories that have rendered him virtually insane. Sequestered in a haunted house with the ghost of Neomi Laress, a dancer murdered by former fiance, Conrad discovers that there are things with living for but it may be too late to save the only woman he has ever held dear.

Review
Gets off to a slow start but heats up halfway through.

Conrad and Neomi complement each other well - he is a sexually inexperienced and vengeful vampire aching for death while she is a brazen and feisty ghost with a zest for life. Their relationship builds slowly into an enchanting romance, and they have some seriously sexy scenes together.

The writing is entertaining as usual although Cole's use of present tense POV during Conrad's transition into sanity falls a little flat. The gothic atmosphere and haunted house setting are compelling as are the cameo appearances by Nix, who never ceases to crack me up, and Bowen and Mariketa, who have such a wonderful dynamic.

Despite its predictability, the plot has some entertaining elements such as Neomi's klepto tendencies (she reminds me of Anya in LOTR) and Conrad's slow recovery from bloodlust. There are, however, several underdeveloped and even confusing points. Conrad's encounter with the dream demon and his subsequent dream/nightmare curse is never fully explained nor is its effect completely apparent. Moreover, there are references to events in Cade and Murdoch's stories that seem disjointed and even had me feeling that I had missed out on a novella. These inconsistencies will apparently be explained further down the line but can be distracting.

One the whole, the story is good and the ending very satisfying. I enjoyed the original resolution to Neomi's mortality problem and look forward to the next book - it will be interesting to see how Cadeon handles things with his human mate. ( )

[b:Dark Needs at Night's Edge|1611656|Dark Needs at Night's Edge (Immortals After Dark, #4)|Kresley Cole|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357613946l/1611656._SY75_.jpg|1605350] by [a:Kresley Cole|4428|Kresley Cole|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1328377628p2/4428.jpg]
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance, Suspense
4.75 Stars

This is the 5th book in the IAD series. And each book is better than the book before it.
Kresley Cole has an amazing imagination.

I was bewildered as to how she would work things out. It was a complex story with astonishing twists & turns.

The characters in each book become more defined. Their personalities substantial. Their world more tangible.

This story is about Conrad & Neomi.
Neomi is a ghost. Conrad a vampire.

And this is a fantastic book! ( )

The heroine was a nice mix of patient and forgiving, and not tolerating mistreatment. In the previous books the hero and heroine were both powerful lore beings, so I was a bit apprehensive that the power balance would be crazy skewed with this one, but the author worked it out well. They don't have equal magical abilities, but they're pretty well matched overall. ( )

2.75 stars.

This one has its ups and downs. During its ups the story is enjoyable, during its downs it is full of the PNR clichés (predestinated mate, the need of protection of that mate and so on).
I bought it months ago and, even though I can't stand the PNR genre anymore, I'd like to read it before selling/donating it. ( )

Another IAD book checked off the list! I started reading about a book a day from this series but then school started and I wasn't reading as much anymore for a while but now I've finally finished this and I really enjoyed it! probably not my favorite but very good. This was our first time with a ghost as a main character and I liked learning more about the world through that.

Our romance in this book is between Conrad and Neomi. I really liked Neomi as a main character. She had a fairly obvious but interesting character struggle where she is literally a ghost and invisible to everyone except for Conrad and is desperate for affection. This struggle is somewhat mirrored in Conrad who has been a vampire who has been drinking blood from the people he kills and it has made him a little unstable. They were both experiencing any sort of affection for the first time in a while and that brought them closer together. As with all the other books so far, there's definitely some gender role stuff that I wouldn't like in a real life situation but it's still fun to read about someone being super protective in a romance novel.

I still enjoy seeing how all the different characters from previous books are all meeting and helping each other, or hating each other in some cases. It makes to world feel much more real and I like see what previous characters are up to. I definitely plan to keep reading this series, I'll probably just be getting to these books a little more slowly. ( )