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Though most of her family are wealthy and move in respected circles, Hazel Blackthorn herself is an outcast from good society. Her late mother had an affair that resulted in her birth. She has been secretly engaged to a handsome young man of good family and hoping that marriage to him will redeem her. But when he announces he will marry her cousin to save his family’s business, her heart and hopes are crushed.

Thrust from her home, Hazel finds herself outside at a dangerous time: the Alignment. Every 30 years, seven planets align and the mythical, magical Bazaar becomes accessible. People in higher society shut themselves off so as not to be tempted by the vain delights of the Bazaar. Hazel, alone and without anything to her name, is approached by an old man with a proposition: he will pay her a great deal of money to enter the Bazaar and bring back a medicine that will heal his ailing wife.

Hoping that the money can help her former fiancé and allow them to marry, Hazel enters the strange and dangerous world where gods used to rule. She eventually meets a young man who tells her the powerful king of the Bazaar wants to meet her. Hazel only acquiesces because she discovers she can’t find the medicine she needs on her own. But things get very complicated, and she becomes caught in a spider’s web of intrigue, mystery and secrets.

Hazel has a limited window of time to get in and out, but the longer she is in the Bazaar, the more she has time to ponder on whether the love she is sacrificing so much for is worth it. And she realizes the stakes of this game are much higher than she could possibly have imagined.

These Wicked Stars had some elements that beckoned me to read: magic, fantasy, romance, a mysterious place that only appears every few decades. It had a similar feel at the beginning to Caraval, which is one of my favorites. But this just didn’t “do it” for me. The heroine seems to miss some obvious clues to a number of important parts of the story, which was frustrating. I can’t say too much or I’ll spoil the plot. But suffice it to say I didn’t get entirely on board with what was happening and her reactions to things.

For some reason, I’ve come across several books recently (Divine Rivals is one, the Empirium series is another, the Caraval series ended up being another) where old gods have been defeated and locked away, this one included. Now that I’m finished reading this, I don’t really care one way or another what happens next. So while this is just the start of a bigger story, I won’t be moving on to any sequels.

Rated: Mild. Profanity includes a few uses of mild language. There are some uses of a word often used as profanity but which here is used in its literal sense of illegitimacy. Sexual content includes several instances of kissing and references to a woman who has an affair and a child outside of her marriage. Violence is fairly frequent, with some bloody injuries and deaths by various means.

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