The Cartography of First Love

By Angela Grey

Tagline: First love leaves the deepest coordinates.

On the sterile walls of a small-city psychiatric ward, two teenagers sketch out a secret map of belonging. Zibby has been hospitalized for an eating disorder; Nico is struggling under the weight of depression and anxiety. Neither expected to find friendship, let alone something as fragile and fierce as love, between locked doors and therapy sessions.

For six luminous weeks, their days are measured not by clocks but by the rhythm of occupational therapy, gym time, and stolen conversations in the greenhouse. Together they plant seeds, draw maps, and learn to share truths they've never spoken aloud. Each letter, each glance, feels like a contour line marking the landscape of a first love that is both tender and uncharted.

But when discharge comes, they are pulled apart-Zibby back to the uncertainty of recovery, Nico to the weight of his own unfinished story. They promise to remember, but life has a way of redrawing even the clearest maps.

Years later, in the crowded anonymity of the Las Vegas airport, a familiar profile catches Zibby's eye. A name spoken across the concourse stops time. What began in the fragile confines of a psych ward finds its echo in the most unlikely of places, proving that some coordinates never fade.

The Cartography of First Love is a heartfelt young adult romance about memory, resilience, and the way first love etches itself permanently into who we are. Blending emotional intimacy with poetic motifs of maps and landscapes, this novel invites readers to trace the lines of their own first loves-the ones that changed them forever.

Key Themes:

• Mental health, recovery, and hope
• The transformative power of first love
• The metaphors of mapping, memory, and belonging
• Second chances and echoes of the past

For readers of: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.