I'm left in this quiet, foggy kind of surreal place after reading this book. This is a great beginning to a very intriguing story. It is definitely a short story being 15 pages but it carried so much weight. It is beautifully written, compelling, placing me in a trance and wanting much more when it ended.Some thoughts: I didn't care for the authors description of Sebastian who is the mysterious friend in the synopsis. She describes his lips being too full to ever be considered sexy and nose too wide to be considered beautiful although she thought him handsome. I know it was meant to be Rose's opinion but please be careful. Those features ARE beautiful. Voodoo or Vodun is mentioned and I'm excited to see this included in the book and hope the author does the religion justice by being as accurate as possible. Finally, Rose is an eight year old but the voice carried in the book is of an adult. I actually thought this was an adult book until I read the About the Author blurb and realized the author writes YA. So this had me a bit confused throughout the book but only a bit.All in all, overall, it was good enough to rate, comment and want more of this trilogy. ( )