When sixteen-year-old Rose Perrault wakes to find herself in hospital, she has little memory of her life before the coma that put her there. Her awakening is welcomed with relief and joy by her aunts, whose faces are the only familiar sights that greet her. She knows they are her caretakers, and that they all come from France, but otherwise her memory is a blur.
Yet as she recovers, there is something that troubles Rose about her aunts. They seem to be hiding something, and afraid of something as well, as though they fear that they -- and Rose -- are in danger. Her aunts seem, at times, to be able to do things that are simply impossible, like moving from one place to another without crossing the distance between. Their luck is extraordinary -- almost magical.
And when she dreams, Rose has nightmares of fairy tales gone horribly wrong.
Soon, she learns the story of Sleeping Beauty, and as events unfold and her aunts' fears become greater . . . and a dark, mysterious woman begins to follow her . . . Rose begins to believe that the story of Sleeping Beauty is real, and that the princess in the tale is herself. And now that she has awakened, she is in terrible, terrible danger.