As Stanzie discovers her wolf, she learns being herself is more dangerous than ever.Where is Bethany Dillon? The seventeen-year-old girl is missing from the Maplefair pack and Constance Newcastle--Stanzie--and Liam Murphy must find her. Fast. A serial killer still has not been caught. Bethany could have run away, or killed herself. But no one in her pack seems to know the truth. Or, they’re just not telling.
Constance’s knack for uncovering secrets leads her into peril, and to save Bethany, she must break every rule. She risks losing everything, including Liam...and her life.
***
Is love enough to overcome certain obstacles? Does it make people blind? Does it grant them courage under adverse circumstances or does it make them vulnerable?
This is the main question the third novel in The Wolf Within series, Hidden in Plain Sight, asks.
The past collides with the present not only for Stanzie, who finds several parallels between her life and the life of the missing girl, Bethany Dillon, but also for Stanzie’s ex pack mate, Vaughn Pelletier, who journeys with her and Murphy back to his birth pack, Maplefair, in Vermont.
Secrets that have been buried and guarded for decades come to light and bring with them a danger that threatens to tear the pack apart.
This novel is a departure for the series. The first two novels dealt with the conspiracy. Worldwide in the Pack, people are being murdered. In the first novel, Beneath the Skin, Stanzie and Murphy discover the existence of this conspiracy. In the second, Scratch the Surface, Stanzie deals with her personal connection to the conspiracy. Her original bond mates, Grey and Elena, were two of those murdered and Stanzie confronts those responsible.
As Advisors to Councilor Jason Allerton, Stanzie and Murphy investigate crimes committed by people in different packs. In the third novel I wanted to get away from the conspiracy and explore one of these other kinds of crimes.
Enter Bethany Dillon. Seventeen and rebellious.
I’d always had this picture of Stanzie being the perfect child, the submissive girl eager to please everyone, but it was in this third novel that I began to catch glimpses of the real Constance Newcastle. She was not quite as tractable as I’d originally envisioned her. It was during the writing of this novel that as I developed the character of Bethany Dillon, I also filled in many of the blank spots in Stanzie’s life.
When Bethany goes missing, Stanzie leaps to a conclusion that proves correct, but no one wants to believe the solution is that simple because it involves lies and cover ups and things no one in Bethany’s pack, Maplefair, wants to face.
At the end of Scratch the Surface, Stanzie’s old pack mate, Vaughn Pelletier, leaves Riverglow to stay with Stanzie and Murphy for awhile. The tragedy of the conspiracy has struck him hard and he has nowhere to go.
This is his story as much as it is Stanzie’s. He, too, must come face to face with his past and come to grips with the consequences of his past actions. Maplefair was his birth pack and he knows everyone, yet when he returns to Vermont with Stanzie and Murphy, no one in the pack really acknowledges him. He’s been closemouthed about his past as long as Stanzie has known him and Stanzie comes to understand why as the novel unfolds.
Hidden in Plain Sight is a love story. Bethany Dillon and her teenaged boyfriend, Cody Brown. Stanzie and Murphy. Even Vaughn comes face to face with an old flame.
Idealized love. Hero worship. Knights in shining armor come to save the damsel in distress. But real life is not a fairy tale and sometimes reality can kick your ass.
And when there’s a serial killer on the loose, well, all bets are off.
Stanzie and Murphy’s journey began in Beneath the Skin, continued in Scratch the Surface and for the moment has ended up here in Hidden in Plain Sight.
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