The Oversight

The Oversight
Rating: 5/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher

The Oversight is a secret society, one that polices the supranaturals in our world, and monitors the line between the mundane and the magical. Once, it had hundreds of members. But during a battle with the French, the entirety of the Oversight who went to help....disappeared, never to be seen or  heard from again, but no-ones entirely sure if they're dead or not. Now all that's left is 5 members, enough to make the final hand and keep things in order, but not enough to do battle with the enemy that is revealing itself. As soon as the hand is down to four.....chaos will reign in London. Great Fire of London? Caused by the Oversight failing.

One night, a dodgy bloke brings a girl to the Oversights London Safe House, a girl that screams whenever she touches walls and other surfaces. Sara recognizes the girl as being just like her, a Glint, seeing glimpses of the past when touching certain surfaces, she thinks the girl will be their new recruit, their salvation, and the beginning of them building their ranks back up. But she's a trap.

There are those who want entrance to the house and all it's magical contents, including a device that can mark out the supranatural from the regular and would have tragic consequences if in the wrong hands. Witch Hunt type consequences. And they will stop at nothing to get what they want and bring down the Oversight.

The Oversight is threatened. The borders between worlds are breaking down. One member vanishes in to the mirrors after Lucy (the girl), to retrieve her and someones severed hand. The Oversight are being torn apart, murders are raging across the city, and the culprit isn't entirely human. The enemy is closing in for the final blow, but can The Oversight prevail?

Remember....when they fall....so do we.

Oh my God, as if I don't have enough favourite book series, Fletcher smacks me with another one! I LOVED this book, seriously loved it and it's genuinely joined the ranks of my favourite series, I'm so excited for the next book it's not even funny.

This book is mindblowingly unique, your imagination is going to get one hell of a workout. The world Fletcher has created is one that is so colourful and vivid that it pulls you in to it's very heart and the atmosphere soaks in to you as you read. The world building is astounding, it's London, but a London with a dark underside of Supranaturals and other various creatures. The world is described to you in detail, but not too much detail so that it's dragging down the pace. It's truly a magical world and a magical read.

This incredible world is inhabited by a cast of unique, intriguing individuals, each as colourful as the world they inhabit, each different from the other, and they will jump off the page at you. They're all well written, secondary characters can stand alone, and each has a different backstory, each as intriguing as the last. It's clear there's more to some characters than meets the eye, it's also clear some of the Oversight members have other dimensions and have backstories that you're itching to find out more about.

There's development in characters relationships as well as themselves. Mr. Sharp and Sara's relationship develops, even though Sharp isn't there for a majority of the book. Lucy infuriated me at first, with how she treated Sara and her actions and just ugh, but she developed and when you see her at the end, she does the right thing, returns Sara's hand, and takes her place in the Oversight. The characters grow and change throughout the story, and also by what new bits of information you're fed about them.

The Oversight has a fantastic fast pace, and flow. The plot is complex, intriguing, entertaining and engaging throughout, from the start until the end. There's different threads woven in, there's different POV's that always change at the right moment, and add to the story and the pace, each either pertains to the story, or appears to be another story that eventually winds its way back to the main story, and it's all woven in to a compelling plot. The narrative is truly engaging and entertaining. The Oversight is never boring, there's always something going on, and it's near on impossible to put down.

In The Oversight you never know what's going to happen next, there's so many twists and turns I honestly couldn't predict them. I mean in the boat scene, I was convinced they where done for, but nope. You think one things going to happen, you're convinced of it and then the opposite happens and you're constantly surprised. Characters that initially seem shady, then prove to be quite the opposite, and have surprises of their own and surprise connections.

I loved all the little ominous moments, like when you see Georgiana for the last time in the book and the narrative is all "she'll be led down a path and get her revenge on Charlie and Lucy" and you're like oooohhh. It's touches like that, that perfectly and subtly set up the next book, and the rest of the series, little hints of what's to come. If those don't add enough intrigue there's the whole mystery surrounding the members of The Oversight who vanished in to the mirrors never to be seen again. Where they betrayed? Are they dead? Where are they? That's a mystery I'm itching to solve, but I haven't quite worked out what happened, and I haven't worked out a theory yet. I'm hoping it'll be solved over the course of the books and I'm excited to solve it, even though I have a feeling it's going to be eked out. Although, I'm wondering if it has anything to do with Dee.....

Not only is The Oversight full of the unique, there's also plenty of rich history/lore/background to the world of the book and the world of The Oversight, we find out so much, but there's plenty more I want to know. I loved how we find out about The Oversight without info dumps, we get the information we need to know, when we need to know it to understand the story, and what we know gets added to over the course of the book.

While our cast of main characters are unique and original, we also have a wide cast of unique baddies, who are truly baddies. Each is different, some are magical, some are not, we find out a lot about each, but again, there's the space where we need to know more, and there's more to be found out over the next few books. When I say they're truly baddies, I mean they're the best kind of baddie, I don't want to give too much away, but they have the devious plans and the minions and the manipulation and they're truly a worthy adversary for our band of heroes. The magical ones are disgustingly bad and grubby and magical and just brilliant.

The narrative is delightfully broken up with these little intervals where we visit a character, who is revealed to be more than she first appears, and who has provided one more push of intrigue to pull you in to the series so you can't get out of it! I'm sure we'll be seeing more of her, and I'm excited to know who she is, what she is and what she's going to bring to the story. There's also little extracts written by a relation of Sara's I'm assuming her grandfather! Like I said, the next book is perfectly set up, it's the perfect ending, a resolution of sorts, with some threads left open, and new adventures started and some questions, but it doesn't have an evil cliffhanger that's going to make the wait more painful than usual!

This is exactly the kind of book I love, the historical, the magical, the mystery, it's just so yaaaaaasss!
It really reminded me of an adult version of The Mortal Instruments, without the demons obviously, and with the Supranaturals instead, and without the romance, there is a romance of sorts in The Oversight but it's not overbearing nor is it the main focus of the book, it's subtle.

The Oversight is a perfect blend of genres, with colourful characters in a colourful world, full of magic, truly bad baddies, mystery, and a complex plot that doesn't require notes to keep up with! There's plenty of rich information found out and left to be found out and a mystery that could be hovering around the story until the very end. I truly loved this book, I'm truly excited for the next book, to see what happens to our characters next, and I'm excited to find out more about the world that has been created, particularly the mirrors thing and the creepy Mr. Dee....so much YEEESS!