The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
The Cartographers
by Peng Shepherd
Magical Realism | Fantasy | Mystery
392 Pages
Released March 2022
Rating: ★★★★
This book grabbed me from the first pages, and despite some slow parts, kept me pretty entertained throughout the whole novel.
This book takes place in New York. Our main character, Nell, works a job reproducing maps after having a huge falling out with her father (a renown cartographer), causing her to lose a coveted job at the New York Public Library’s Cartography division. In the process, she also loses her fiancee. Nella is still a bit bitter, not to mention confused, about the whole ordeal but has to push this aside when she learns about the death of her father.
His death brings their falling out back to the forefront of Nell’s thoughts and the story really kicks off when she rediscovers the map that caused the falling out.
I really enjoyed the premise of this book. It was a dual-perspective and in this case, really worked well to keep me engaged from chapter to chapter.
I also really enjoyed the direction this story went in. Without spoiling anything, I’d never read a story with this kind of premise, so it was nothing like I’ve read before.
The reason this book didn’t quite reach a five start is because I did find myself feeling twinges of boredom at times, there were some decisions made in the book that I wasn’t a fan of, and the ending was soft of “meh”. But overall these felt easy to overlook as I enjoyed the overall story despite these issues.