Cold by Alison Carpenter

When Joanna Holbrook-Sutherland, (Jo) sees a photograph of a homeless woman in her mother’s London gallery, she has no idea how much her life is about to change, forever. There is something about the photograph that is drawing Jo to find the woman who she’s been seeing in her dreams.

Jo is a playgirl. She has lots of women she doesn’t care about and lots of casual sex too. So, when Jo sets out with determination to find the nameless woman, her friends and family are shocked by her single-mindedness.

Piece by piece, Jo puts together the snippets of information she has and finds herself in Whitechapel and at last in front of Rocky.

Twenty year old Rocky has been living rough on the streets of London, barely surviving for the past five years. She is laden down with deep, dark haunting secrets. Jo knows the road ahead will be hard, but is determined to save Rocky from the past which is haunting her and her bleak, dangerous life on the streets. She has to find a way to get Rocky to open up and to trust her.

Jo engulfs Rocky in a secure blanket filled with all the love she has to give. But will Jo’s love be enough?

I first read this story online years ago and have read it several times since. I loved it then, just as much as I love it now. This is a story that gripped me from the first page right through to it’s climatic ending. I was so pleased to see this re-published as I feel this is one story that new readers to lesfic deserve to have the pleasure of reading.

This is an unusual story, one which many may say, ‘right, like that would ever happen’. Well, it may or may not happen, who knows? It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. But, this is fiction after all and a story that has been thoughtfully crafted and is for me a must re-read every couple of years.

These characters are well written, fully developed and multi-faceted. There is a good cast of secondary characters to enhance and progress the story along. The plot was very well thought out and put together with lots of twists and turns throughout. There were a few typos, but nothing that pulled me out of the story. It’s a page turner right the way through. It is in my re-read folder for it’s usual annual read.