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.