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I strongly suspected that this installment was going to be a miss for me because ghost romances are a personal pet peeve of mine, but I’m listening to this series in order, and it was next up on my to-do list. Kresley Cole’s writing and Robert Petkoff’s narration were by no means at fault here; I still enjoyed many of the secondary elements of this story, the most noteworthy of which being Nix’s dialogue and the author’s phone sex style approach to the earlier love scenes was as erotic as it sounds.

Spooks have their place in paranormal fiction such as hauntings, or sidekicks, my difficulty with them lies in their feasibility as happily-ever-after candidates. There are really only two possible scenarios in this type of situation, and that is for either the deceased half of the couple to be revived by magical means, or for the living partner to join their beloved in the beyond. Option two is kind of a downer, so authors tend to ostracize it in favour of the former which essentially means that a character will be brought back to life thus breaking one of my top three hard no-no rules. Again, this is an individual preference.

Docking an audiobook two stars for the above seems pretty harsh which is why my quibbles with DARK NEEDS AT A NIGHT’S EDGE do not end there. Initially I liked Conrad’s character; he was edgy, on the cusp of madness, and cutthroat to the extreme. Néomi for her part didn’t make much of an impression on me; she was moody, superficial, and rather boring to be honest. Their relationship was comprised of numerous long winded discussions, stop-and-starts, and overall they just lacked chemistry. I enjoyed the other two Wroth brothers, Bowen, Cadeon & Rydstrom’s brief cameos, and as usual the Soothsayer bits were a slam dunk.

I thanked my lucky stars that Robert Petkoff’s narration was there to see my through book 4 because without him I would have been in real danger of giving up on this installment. His transition from present to past tense as he followed Conrad’s progression from insanity to lucidity was a stroke of genius in both its delivery, and Cole’s writing technique. Petkoff stayed true to the French language with his accent, and pronunciations while also conveying Néomi’s coquettish femininity which demonstrated great range considering his aptitude with the bestial alpha males of this series.

My issues with DARK NEEDS AT A NIGHT’S EDGE were wholly my own, so what was only an average listen for me could be, and is an extraordinary addition to the IMMORTALS AFTER DARK franchise for the masses.