Unacceptable Risk by Kaje Harper
Hidden Wolves, Book 1
MLR Press
Gay Paranormal
ISBN: 978-1-60820-465-6
Reviewed by Cassie




Gay werewolf Simon Conley has made a spot for himself with the grudging tolerance of his pack, but lately things have been different.  He finds out how different one night when he is attacked by several pack members and left to die on an icy road.  Fortunately for him, the first driver to come by is a veterinarian.  Unfortunately, after the vet takes Simon back to his clinic and patches him up, he locks Simon in a cage.  Simon bides his time, and the second he gets a chance, he escapes.  Humans aren’t allowed to learn about werewolves and live, and the last thing he wants is to endanger the kind man who saved his life.

Veterinarian Paul Hunter is disappointed and worried when the big, gentle dog he rescued disappears from his clinic.  He tries to find the dog, only to have a man named Simon show up claiming to be the dog’s owner.  After seeing “Wolf” and reassuring himself the dog is healing, Paul expects to go back to his normal routine.  Instead, Simon keeps coming around, reminding Paul to eat and enticing him to take breaks from work.  Pretty soon they’re easing into a relationship, despite Paul’s uncertainty…but Simon’s secret might be the death of them both.

Unacceptable Risk is a suspenseful, action-packed, and yet sweet tale of secrets, power struggles, and daring to love despite the risks involved.  It was easy to like Simon, whose happy-go-lucky attitude masks a soft heart and a will of iron.  Workaholic Paul was equally easy to like, due to his caring for animals, confusion about his sexuality, and his vulnerability.  Both Simon and Paul are searching for someone to care for, something they finally find in each other.  Their relationship isn’t allowed to develop in the usual way, however, because of the secrets Simon is keeping and the machinations of his pack’s Second.

One really great thing about Unacceptable Risk is that the romance and action storylines run parallel from the very beginning.  The suspense starts in the first chapter and never really lets up.  This is in part because of the well-drawn secondary characters.  It’s difficult to ascertain the motivations of many of the characters, and the villain, while wholly bad and a bit two-dimensional, is unpredictable.  He wants to take over the pack, but how will he do it?  Which pack members will take his side?  Who will back Simon, an unpopular and less powerful wolf?  With questions like those to answer, I had no choice but to read on.

The romance part of the story, on the other hand, develops slowly, without the dreaded insta-love so often found in wolf shifter books.  Not wanting to give up Paul, Simon is forced to juggle his pack’s rules about secrecy, keeping the bad guys away from Paul, keeping Paul from suspecting anything, all at the same time.  Near the end, the story takes several twists (some I saw coming and a few I didn’t), all of which kept the roller-coaster ride going.  I really enjoyed Unacceptable Risk, and it helped cement Kaje Harper’s status as an auto-buy author for me.  Fans of shifter books will be sure to like Unacceptable Risk, but I’d recommend it to just about any reader of m/m romance.