After struggling with depression during her senior year in high school, Ocean moves to New York City to attend college. But the pressure to succeed coupled with her loneliness to find belonging caused her to defer a year without telling her mother. Ocean moves in with two roommates, meets a fellow student & graffiti artist Constantine Brave, and slowly finds her way to adulthood.

CARTOGRAPHERS is a beautifully written story on normalizing taking time off to figure out what you want and finding a community that allows you to make mistakes. It covers topics ranging from loneliness, adulthood, friendships, romance, and complex mother-daughter relationships.

I adore the writing of CARTOGRAPHERS but find the idea lackluster. Ocean and Constantine's conversations on free will, justice, and relativity are quite hollow & pretentious that I cringed so hard when listening to the audiobook. I was also hoping for more exploration of how Ocean navigates her mental health struggles through therapy, rather than getting involved with men and "learning lessons through relationships."

CARTOGRAPHERS is an exquisitely written novel that could be enjoyable for some but sadly didn't quite work for me.