Mirrigold: Mutterings & Musings

How to Love Thine Enemy by Eli Easton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was lucky enough to get to beta-read this for Eli and I fell in love from the start.

Each one of her Howl at the Moon books has brought something unique to the table and this one is no different.

It takes the reader to the far reaches of the world, to the Alaskan wilds and to the home of the Inuit.

Focusing on Taq, an Inuit who lives in a remote village, we start the story when he’s a child, playing with a mysterious boy called Cupun.

Years later their paths cross again when Taq spots the subjects of book five escaping a bear by shifting into their dog forms. His curiosity leads to a horrible accident and he’s taken to the two-skinned Quimmiq pack’s isolated mining camp to recover.

What I loved about this book so much is the pure joy in the friendship which Cupun offers to Taq. His is a soul who wants everyone to be happy.

Of course he’s attracted to the Inuit too, but the charm of this book is in the friendship formed by them and the potential for hope that the Quimmiq can offer to Taq’s village, at risk from the rising sea and precariously perched on the edge of land.

The idea of dogs who loved humans so much they gained the spark which allowed them to shift into a two-legged form has been absolutely brilliant throughout the series.

Cupun’s human form displays all the characteristics of his Husky nature, he’s loyal and curious, active and a bit impulsive.

For Taq, his struggles are in knowing that his family and the Inuit elders think the Quimmiq are either a myth or a set of thieves.

When the two dissenting viewpoints inevitably clash, it looks like Taq and Cupun will be separated again. But with consummate ease, Eli draws out the tension onto a different direction, one which results in the prejudices having to be set aside for the good of all.

I’m so hoping this wasn’t the last visit we get with the two-skinned, I think Cupun’s pack leader Yuki, brother of book five’s Timo, has definitely got a thing going on with one of the Mad Creek shifters!

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