A Captivating Touch by Elsa Winckler

⭐⭐⭐

The last book I picked up for the Romance Takeover Readathon - Light v. Dark was A Captivating Touch by Elsa Winckler. I had this on my tbr as Touched to the Heart, but this was actually republished in 2020 with a new title and now is listed as the 0.5 prequel to the Cavallo Brothers series. This covered the readathon's prompt billionaire, Summer of Swoon 2nd bingo board's prompt set in a country/state I don't live in and the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo's prompt bicycle.

Don is participating in a bicycle race with his brothers. When he pulls a back muscle, he heads to one of the phsyio tents. There he overhears Caitlin talking to her friend about how unattractive she finds cyclists. She's instantly proved wrong when she meets Don. He has a house in the small town she's from and ends up finding her after the race for more physiotherapy. There's a lot of sexual tension between them and Don can't seem to stay away from Caitlin no matter how hard he tries.

Oh boy, this was a hard novella for me to get through. There were good moments, but then moments where I was confused of feeling like "that's it?" I enjoyed the beginning and the banter between Don and Caitlin. Where I really was left wanting was this felt very much like insta-lust and not insta-love. Going into novellas I almost expect for it to be more along the insta-love route, but I just didn't quite get the connection between them. On top of that Caitlin was so back and forth about what she felt about Don. There was even a mention near the end of the book by one of her sisters about if they are still hating Don and that it was: we like him, we hate him, we love him and we hate him again. It just didn't quite hit the mark for me in feeling like their HEA was believable to me. I also kind of found it odd that the three sisters and Caitlin's best friend were being paired with the four Cavallo brothers. That kind of thing doesn't bother me as much with historical romances, but it just felt a little ookie to me.

Despite feeling back and forth on A Captivating Touch, I'm certainly interested to pick up a full length novel from Elsa Winckler. I would like to see how she really develops a relationship with 150 (+/-) more pages. I certainly would love to try more even more so since she's my first South African writer. I also think it's cool that she usually writes in Afrikaans but this series was contracted to be written in English.

Have you read A Captivating Touch?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: A Captivating Touch, Elsa Winckler, 3-stars, 0 days, eBook, 130 pages, published in 2013, small publisher