Review: Unsafe Exposure (Hidden Wolves #4) by Kaje Harper

Stepping out of the closet as a gay man may be a walk in the park, compared to coming out as a werewolf.

From the moment artist Dylan Shore arrives in Chicago, his life gets twisted like a kaleidoscope. Why does a street gang he's never met before want him dead? Why is a hot but odd mathematician stalking him? And how can half the things Alex Corwin says possibly be true, no matter how honest he seems?

Alex has a frightening dilemma. Dylan is attractive, appealing, out and proud. He's also completely unaware that he's a werewolf. It shouldn't be Alex's job to tell him, and warn him that gay wolves usually end up dead. But someone has to, before he finds out in blood and violence.

Chicago's not Alex's home town, but somehow he needs to protect Dylan from the local packs, protect the Packs from being outed by Dylan, and keep his cool around the first man to touch his own deeply-closeted heart.

Unsafe Exposure is the highly anticipated fourth book in Kaje Harper’s Hidden Wolves series.  We finally get to see the werewolves’ ‘coming out’ and what effects it has on them in the aftermath.  I have to say, I loved this story.  There was so much going on that it kept me glued to the pages the whole time.  

Dylan is in town helping his little sister get settled into her new life as a college student when he runs afoul of a street gang at the local zoo.  He doesn’t understand a) why they would be at the zoo of all places and b) what the heck he did to piss them off and make them chase after him.  He’s rescued when a car pulls up alongside of him and the driver yells at him to get in.  Alex is in town for a few months for his job as a statistician.  He sees some guy being chased down the street by a few hoodlums from the local pack and just couldn’t stop himself from helping.

“I stopped for you because I had to.  You looked at me, and you were scared.  Whatever was going on, I couldn’t let them catch you.”

So begins a journey filled with adventure, politics, revelations, courage, self-realization and trust.  And love, can’t forget about that.  Because that’s what makes it all worth it in the end.

I cannot tell you enough how much I love Kaje’s writing.  Such fabulous character building!  And her secondary and tertiary are fully fleshed as well.  Her attention to detail is astounding.  You can tell that she has done extensive research and put a lot of time and thought into building this world.  Her obvious joy in writing shines through and makes it that much more enjoyable for me to read her works.  What I love most about her books is all the realism.  

Have you ever been standing in a long line or maybe stuck in a waiting room and to pass the time you people watch and think, “what’s their story”?  Maybe you see a guy with a cast on his arm and create this elaborate story in your head where he’s a fireman who broke his arm while saving a kitten from a burning building or there’s a woman standing there with bags under her eyes, rumpled clothing and a couple of screeching rugrats circling her and you think that she’s so tired because she just got off shift at the hospital where she single handedly saved the lives of 5 people by performing cutting edge brain surgery all the while battling the Powers That Be for more funding for her research.   I imagine Kaje does something like this, because her books are filled with real people.  They’re not gorgeous, perfectly built men whom everyone lusts over.  They’re just ordinary, everyday people living their lives the best way they know how.  People I would run into on the street or maybe at the grocery store.  It’s so refreshing to read about people I can relate to yet still have a fantastical story about mythical creatures.  If there ever was a person who could convince me that werewolves are real, it’s Kaje Harper.

Copy provided by the author for an honest review

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