Who Knows You by Heart: A Novel

by C.J. Farley

""Electrifying and smart, Who Knows You By Heart is part thriller, part prophecy, part gift and all the way live.""--Junot Diaz

“Scintillates with light and warmth…And it’s hilariously funny. The view of Big Tech through Olivia the coder’s eyes is delicious. I absolutely loved this book.” —Alison Bechdel

Part social thriller, part modern love story, Who Knows You by Heart is a sly, witty, and endlessly discussable tale of Big Tech, new money, relationships, race, and discovering what’s real in an age of artificial intelligence.

Octavia Crenshaw, a Jamaican-American coder living in Manhattan, is broke, burned out, and haunted by her parents’ deaths. Desperate to pay off some debts, she ditches her nonprofit job for a high-paying gig at Eustachian Inc., a Big Tech company that specializes in audio entertainment. Language, communication, human connection—these are the markets Eustachian wants to revolutionize...and dominate.

Octavia finds herself swept up in the world of the Tech Titans, with its lure of instant riches and its seemingly limitless future. But as one of Eustachian’s very few Black employees, Octavia is uncomfortably aware of things that seem to escape her unexplained tech glitches, cryptic remarks, a mysterious secret floor in the corporation’s gleaming headquarters.

But she sets her suspicions aside when she’s recruited by another Black coder—the infuriating but attractive Walcott—to collaborate on a secret project code-named Zion. Zion is a new kind of AI-powered storytelling, one that’s programmed to be free from the racist and sexist biases that plague other AI products. Zion could launch Eustachian into a bold new future and make its developers super rich while righting all kinds of injustices. Octavia and Walcott’s excitement over their creation sets off romantic sparks between the two of them, until they discover a toxic secret about their employer—something that they can’t unlearn, or overlook, but must overcome.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Thriller, Artificial Intelligence, Mystery, Audiobook, Adult

Audible Audio

First published November 11, 2025

Reviews

[Roxane]

I admire the ambition of CJ Farley’s debut novel. I appreciated the narrator’s wryness. She had some really funny lines and wickedly smart observations. The story is both contained and sprawling. In many ways it feels like two novels in one. The dense prose allowed for a slower pace in the first half but then things shift and the novel becomes less a character/circumstance study and more of a high tech thriller. There is so much the novel tackles from race and gender in the tech world to corporate overreach and the ever blurring lines between
humanity and technology. There is an interesting, tempered cynicism that brings a sharp edge to the prose. The second person is a curious choice but I like the second person so it dint distract. A debut novel well worth diving into. I underlined
Quite a few turns of phrase , too and will be mulling this over for a while.

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author womanfished me…

[Sheila · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free copy of, Who Knows You by Heart, by C. J. Farley, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Octavia lives in New York and works as a coder, but she decides to change up her life by taking a new job, and then another one. I dont know much about coding or AI, and did not care for the book in second character point of view. I could not get into that.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC for review. To be published November 11, 2025.

3 stars

Octavia Crenshaw, a Jamaican-American coder living in Manhattan is broke and getting broker due to her late mother’s debts. Hoping to make big tech money she lands a job at Eustachian and gets swept into their world…while still wanting to remain true to herself (wait, is someone really expecting Audible to be the company that changes the world?)

Really enjoyed the first half of this Black girl in big tech story (though if I heard she went to Columbia one more time….) Nice pacing, got her backstory and great details and then the second half went someplace that nontech me didn’t quite follow. Still worth it, though.

[AndaReadsTooMuch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to William Morrow for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

I seem to be on a tear when it comes to reading dark AI stories. But here we are…

After a disastrous chatbot as a newsletter deployment in a non-profit our main character, Octavia is on the hunt for a new job. She lands an interview and role at one of the biggest auditory tech companies on the planet. After she aces a scoring algorithm, that is. And by ace, I mean she brute force cracks it by acting like an overcompensating white man. Gee, who knew unchecked and unethical tech could all go so wrong. (Me. I knew.)

This entire novel is told in second person. It was jarring at first but I found myself immersed quickly and didn’t notice it. It’s clear the issues with tech companies, data collection, and AI are the main threads here and you can tell the author spent time as a minority in tech. The scars run deep. It has some deep philosophical moments that had me examining my own career and impact. And I learned a lot about contributions from Black innovators and writers that I didn’t know or only knew the whitewashed version of, which was pretty cool. It’s often eloquent and beautiful as Octavia struggles with grief after losing both her parents and her own sense of self.

But. And there is a but. It’s strangely slow for being as short as it is. At the 50% mark it felt like we were getting to the wrap up and I had to double check my progress. The pacing is a little off, it felt drawn out and clunky in places it should have been picking up. The interaction with the blind old man towards the end felt out of place. Honestly, you could lose that entire interaction and still not lose anything in the narrative. And the last chapter I have serious mixed feelings about. The concept is solid but I would have loved more breadcrumbs throughout. I guessed the “twist” easily but I can’t say that is for everyone as my background as a woman in tech is a walking spoiler here.

This is more of a nitpick than anything else. For whatever reason being this is about a big tech company dealing with DEI issues has absolutely zero mentions of any South Asian representation. CJ Farley primarily focuses on Black and white, with one fairly minor Asian character. This feels like a huge miss when discussing race in a tech environment, but again this could have been sticking with their own direct experiences vs trying to be inclusive of all PoCs in tech.

Overall, it’s a solid read and I enjoyed it. Octavia made some dumb choices, owned up to them, made more trying to make it right. The frankness in how CJ Farley writes her feels authentic and real. I’d be interested in reading more from this author in the future.

[Raquel Dias da Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read an eARC provided by Edelweiss Plus. This is a fever dream about AI, data collection and ethics; and I am not computing it yet. Need some more processing.

---

C. J. Farley’s Who Knows You By Heart is a singular novel that defies easy categorization, threading together a social thriller, a complex love story, and a piercing meditation on technology, race, and identity in the digital age. At its core, it is a deeply human story told through the fresh and risky lens of second-person narration—a choice that initially disorients but ultimately invites readers into an intimate, immersive engagement with Octavia Crenshaw, the novel’s sharply drawn and profoundly flawed protagonist.

Set inside the dizzying world of Eustachian Inc., a Big Tech behemoth reminiscent of Amazon, Twitter, and other Silicon Valley giants, Farley delivers a blistering critique of corporate culture—the glossy facades, the hidden floors, and the unspoken microaggressions (or “technoaggressions”) that define life as one of the few Black employees in a predominantly white workplace. The novel smartly captures the alienation and stakes of big tech jobs today, especially for BIPOC professionals, exploring how language, communication, and human connection become commodities ripe for domination and exploitation.

What makes this novel particularly compelling is how Farley entwines this contemporary tech dystopia with cultural history. The honors overlooked figures like Al-Khwarizmi—the person of color who created algebra—and poet Phillis Wheatley, whose genius was so doubted she was subjected to what amounts to Turing tests. Even Thomas Jefferson’s meticulous record-keeping is slyly linked to IBM’s dark collusions. These moments of historical reckoning not only enrich the narrative texture but also reverberate in our present moment, urging us to reconsider the roots of knowledge, power, and racial erasure within the digital frontier.

The narrative’s second-person address—“you did this…” and “you felt that…”—is a stroke of genius. It leaps off the page, making the experience visceral and urgent. At first, it might feel like a strange stylistic gamble, but soon it proves perfectly suited to Octavia’s sharp, funny, and heartbreakingly real voice. Farley’s portrayal of Octavia as a woman navigating grief, ambition, and belonging feels authentic and layered. Octavia’s losses—the death of her parents, the precariousness of her career, even the threat of losing her very self in a world of ulterior motives—anchor the novel’s larger inquiry: in an age where algorithms predict what we think, buy, read—even whom we love—what does it mean to have a heart that’s truly your own?

The romantic dimension between Octavia and Walcott, a fellow coder with a mysterious and “little strange” edge, adds complexity without clichés. Their fraught collaboration on “Zion,” an AI storytelling project designed to be free from racist and sexist bias, offers a tantalizing glimpse of technological hope—only to be undercut by the corporate dystopian reality they uncover. Meanwhile, Octavia’s interactions with another co-worker, Blue, enrich the interplay of attraction and alliance, reminding readers that personal connections in this high-pressure world are anything but simple.

Farley also captures a moment when Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives face sharp pushback, even as technology threatens to replace people wholesale. The novel is a vital reminder that what makes us human—our stories, histories, and hearts—cannot be digitized or erased; and its ambition is impressive, weaving current developments in AI and digital colonialism with reflections on ethics and identity (can technology ever truly escape the biases of the society that builds it?).

The book is not without its challenges. Some readers may find the pacing dips in the midsection, and the highly specialized tech and AI jargon can sometimes feel dense or distancing. The occasional raw language feels jarring against the more reflective moments. That said, these are minor quibbles in a novel that offers plenty of wit, cultural commentary, and emotional resonance.

Farley’s humor is a welcome counterbalance to the weighty themes. The character Noelle Swizzler—a playfully sharp stand-in for Taylor Swift—provides well-timed levity that humanizes the story’s tech industry satire.

And the final chapter? Mind-blowing. The thought-provoking finale questions not just the future of AI but what it ultimately means to remain human in a hyper-digitized, surveilled world. This is a book that invites discussion, self-reflection, and perhaps a little discomfort—and that’s its greatest achievement.

Starting this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was quickly transported into something both fresh and urgent, multifaceted and fiercely discussable.

Who Knows You By Heart is not just a novel about technology or race or even love—it’s about recognizing what it means to be truly human in a world increasingly defined by algorithms. Its an often unsettling read, but also an incredibly generous one. It offers both suspenseful storytelling and fertile ground for debate—the sort of book that makes you want to text a friend and say: we need to talk about this.

I highly recommend reading it—you might just discover something vital about yourself along the way.

---

Tive acesso a uma cópia avançada através da Edelweiss+. A protagonista é Octavia Crenshaw, uma programadora negra a trabalhar numa grande empresa tecnológica. Foi o primeiro livro que li escrito na segunda pessoa. Estranhei a início, mas acabou por resultar muito bem. Em vez de criar distância, essa escolha aproximou-me ainda mais da Octavia – mesmo estando eu longe de ser uma mulher negra num meio dominado por homens brancos. A história surpreendeu-me desde o início e mergulha em problemáticas bastante actuais e relevantes: desde a colecta de dados e os limites éticos da inteligência artificial até à forma como, por trás da inovação, continuam a persistir desigualdades estruturais. Por vezes senti-me um pouco perdida, sem perceber muito bem para onde a narrativa me estava a levar. Ainda assim, o que sustenta e dá força ao livro é a protagonista: genuinamente interessante, complexa, com um contexto rico e bem desenvolvido.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

The long afternoon reflections of most literary novelists pad behind the latest technology like a cat following a speeding car: The cat doesn’t have a chance — or any interest. Manuscripts might be delivered instantly by email, but they still crawl through a publishing gauntlet rusted into place decades ago. By the time a novel emerges from its chrysalis and alights on a bookstore shelf, ChatGPT is already fabricating dissertations on epistemology.

But if AI is dissolving the competition from human creativity, a few flesh-and-blood novelists are fighting back tooth and claw.

In July, Bruce Holsinger’s “Culpability” crashed into all the moral complications of robot cars calculating who lives and who dies. And now C.J. Farley has published “Who Knows You by Heart,” a wry story about the hidden biases of artificial intelligence. This is a lot harder than it looks. For novelists, spot-on topicality can be an algorithm for obsolescence.

But Farley, a Jamaican-born music critic who grew up in the United States, once worked as an executive editor at Audible, the audiobook company owned by Amazon. That experience seems to have informed much of the sharp satire in his latest novel, despite the standard disclaimer that “any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.” For that matter, I work for The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

This is the sound of the hive mind eating itself.

Farley’s heroine is a brilliant young programmer named Octavia Crenshaw, who is well aware of how rare she is as a Black woman in Big Tech. Desperate for money to resolve a disastrous decision made by her late mother, Octavia casts aside her ethical qualms and accepts a position with Eustachian Inc., “the global leader in audio entertainment products.”

From the moment she arrives, Octavia feels vaguely unsettled about Eustachian, which gives off a creepy vibe somewhere between “The Circle,” by Dave Eggers, and “The Other Black Girl,” by Zakiya Dalila Harris. Octavia is not entirely sure whether the colleagues she’s Zooming with are real people or virtual chatbots. Among the novel’s most cringeworthy moments are periodic “technoaggressions” that recount the way Octavia is slighted, ignored and judged by her White peers. Not that anyone will ever know, because....

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Micronova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who Knows You by Heart by C.J. Farley
Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
4 stars

This wasn’t the book for me. In fact, I feel like this book will appeal to a very small niche audience.
It is extremely “big tech” heavy with full cast of programmers working for an A.I. company. The second person narrative was off putting for me, making it difficult for me to really immerse myself in the story.

BUT-

If I’m honest, this is actually a very deep, thought provoking book. There is a lot to be learned about Black history within the industry. There are a lot of conversations that really make you question a person’s ethics vs the algorithm’s of the corporate world and the struggle to remain authentically human in an era that is pushing for A.I. to essentially replace…everyone. There are glimpses into the still very real struggle for women to be considered equals to men in the business world. And there is a very complicated love story.

I initially rated this lower but I then considered that while it wasn’t an enjoyable read for me, there is an audience who will be blown away by this novel. It is written very well and I believe a great many debates will be had by the readers who appreciate the content. It isn’t the author’s fault that the jargon was too complex for me to compute and that is the reason I’ve rated it as high as I have.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher William Morrow for the digital advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Expected publish date: November 11th.

[Stacy40pages · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who Knows You By Heart by CJ Farley. Thanks to @williammorrow for the gifted copy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Octavia, a Jamaican American working as a coder in New York City scored a high paying job at Eustachian, a big tech company. She quickly gets swept into their world but beings suspicious of a new project she’s working on.

Anyone interested in business ethics in a suspenseful read will like this one. That is just one component of the story but makes up a large amount of the suspense. It’s also about being a woman of color in big tech. Some parts were so wild it felt almost satirical but I know that this life is lived by many. The micro aggressions within the work place and how Octavia reacted to them were perfectly done.

“The biggest crimes weren’t in the shadows, they were in plain sight.”

Who Knows You By Heart comes out 11/11.

[Hijabi_booklover]

This book was a major struggle to get through because of the formatting it was written in. I even tried having kindle read it to me and I still couldn’t get into it. It’s told in You said, you did, you are etc the entire book

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Octavia is a Jamaican-American coder and she is broke, dealing with the fall out of her mother’s death, and in debt. She leaves her job for a high paying job at Eustachian Inc, a big tech company that specializes in audio entertainment. She collaborates with another black employee, Walcott, on a special project entitled Zion. As they spend time together, sparks fly. But when they uncover things about their company, they have a decision to make.

This book was just not for me, at all. I didn’t like it and I wanted to DNF it so bad. But I pushed through hoping that it would get better. It did slightly, but not enough. Right from the beginning, I struggled with the second person point of view. You this and You that. I didn’t connect with the character and it was strange. I understood from the Epilogue why it was written that way, but it just didn’t work for me.

This book was only 288 pages, but it was SO wordy. What I mean is that there was so much in there that didn’t need to be. This book could have been like 50-100 pages shorter if that stuff was edited out and you’d still have the same story without missing anything. There was too much prose and not enough dialogue and action.

There was so much reference to a singer Noelle Swizzler (a made up artist for the book), but anyone reading it would know that really it was Taylor Swift. I knew that and I’m not really a Swiftie! I didn’t like that at all.

This is self described as a thriller. I don’t agree all. Keep it under the Sci-Fi genre and let it be that. There are a lot of great reviews for this book, so if you like AI – Sci-Fi books, then check this one out.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books that's both entertaining and a portent of the future with AI! Octavia gets a job at Eustachian which is a leader in audio entertainment. Initially she loves it there as there are other black women working and she tends to make friends easily. But apparently there are "teams" and role playing hackers to "test" the firewalls and all the team members must use euphemisms to express their thoughts. It's a crazy look at a future that could be ours one day, and it has a delightful sardonic tone!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

[Chelsea]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy

Who Knows You by Heart by C. J. Farley is a second person-POV sci-fi thriller. Octavia is a Jamaican-American coder who lost her job after accidentally leaking the secrets of many of her coworkers. To keep her mother’s apartment, she takes a job at Eustachian Inc., a Big Tech company with some secrets. When she’s hired on, she starts to work more with Walcott, a fellow employee, on an AI, but the deeper she goes, the more she finds things that concern her.

One of the most interesting things about this book was how it brought up the Luddites and framed them not as being anti-technology, but as being against machines taking the jobs of humans. Everything I know about the Luddites has been framed through the ‘anti-technology’ lens and I am very curious to learn more because it does parallel what is going on in today’s world and how we do need to be concerned about machines taking the hard work of artists instead of giving us the time to make art.

It has been a very long time since I have read anything in second person-POV and I thought it worked very well here. It’s a bold choice that lends the prose to a more literary style along with how the themes of anti-Black racism, art, the tech industry, and AI are explored. It does take a little getting used because this POV is mostly used in short stories these days, but it is worth it to stick around because C. J. Farley goes very deep into the themes.

The romance arc between Octavia and Walcott is more of a love story C or D-plot rather than a prominent romance arc that really shapes a lot of things. While Walcott and Octavia’s relationship is definitely present and it does impact the plot, it’s not guiding it. The interesting thing about their romance is how they are such very different people with very different interests, yet they’ve both found their way to the tech industry and to this particular company. Octavia even goes so far as to think of Walcott as a nerd the first time she meets and it is ironic given how deeply interested she is in technology.

Content warning for depictions of anti-Black racism including slurs

I would recommend this to fans of sci-fi thrillers that are more literary and readers looking for something that explores the various ways AI can be harmful

[callistoscalling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the author for a gifted copy of this one; all thoughts are my own.

📖 Book Review 📖 Octavia Crenshaw’s inner dialogue has been a bit of an existential overdrive lately. Burned out and still grieving the loss of her parents, she quits her job and interviews for a job at a tech firm out in New Jersey hoping to diversify their employee field. It all seems promising enough but as someone who has never worked in this field, there sure are a lot of NDAs to sign. The further Octavia dives into her latest AI project at her new company, the stranger things get.

Written uniquely in the second person, Who Knows You By Heart draws the reader into a beautiful cognitive dissonance. In a world where our technology is advancing so rapidly while our advancements in social justice are disappearing at an alarmingly scary rate, C.J. Farley brings an intriguing and gripping story that is so reflective of our current milieu it gives goosebumps..

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in the AI workplace environment of big tech, this brilliant and witty novel follows the trials and tribulations of a young black female coder trying to recover from her parent’s deaths and overwhelming debts. This novel is a seriously fascinating look at AI, racism in the workplace, and the struggle to survive and flourish in today’s insane world.

I thoroughly enjoyed this witty take on the advancements and threats posed by AI. Recommended for readers who enjoy workplace storylines and humor. Warning: language.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who Knows You by Heart by C.J. Farley is a chilling novel about the dark side of AI.

Octavia Crenshaw is the sympathetic lead character who embarks on a new job at a big tech company that specializes in audiobooks. While working on an assignment, she uncovers shocking info. With a buyout looming over the company, Octavia is drawn into a project that she hopes will revolutionize AI.

Octavia is an incredibly intelligent woman who is a brilliant coder. She is leery about working at a big tech company but she desperately needs the money. Octavia is fascinated by two of her new co-workers but can she trust either of them?

Who Knows You by Heart is a clever novel that highlights gender and race issues in big tech. The characters are well-drawn with Octavia giving her co-workers some funny nicknames. Written in second person, the storyline is riveting with the first half of the novel moving a bit slowly. When the possibility of the buyout inching ever closer, the story shifts into high gear. C.J. Farley shines a much-needed light on the dangers of exactly how big tech uses consumers’ information. A fantastic epilogue perfectly wraps up this wonderful novel.

[Lit_Vibrations]

Special thanks to the author & @williammorrowbooks for my gifted copy!! I had to DNF at 35% I just couldn’t get into it. Although funny at times I was over Octavia naming her coworkers things like Wombat and Braids lol. I think the book could’ve had potential if it were structured better and the characters weren’t so one dimensional. Octavia was all over the place with her thinking and recollection of past memories. I just kept wondering where the story was headed because honestly nothing was happening and I was already 100 pages in. Idk but this one just wasn’t for me but it may be for you!

[Bea · Rating 3 out of 5]

oh boy
this surely was a book.....
thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the ARC
full review on my substack
If you’re at all interested in a more informative, second person view tale of a programmer who has debatably shaky morals & don’t mind the mindfuck that can happen with AI I’d say give it a try but for the rest of us who want to shut off every single AI within my own bubble I think it’s best to leave this book behind.

[Amy]

No
A book I borrowed from the library to try before I buy (tired buying hundreds books and hating half)

I do not rate these “tested”
books. This is really for me. I will not be buying, reading borrowing this book.

I read first ch or more -first 10-100 pages skim around at times. I read many of my GR friend’s reviews. This is what I did and didn’t like:

Love the cover

Read this in my kindle as my library doesn’t even recognize this title (a sign)

Written in second person -the text directly addresses the reader, using the pronoun "you" NO!!

Ok this is written in

[Alesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating, spellbinding book this is!

First, I was convinced it was written by a woman. It’s told in second person singular (“You did this…”), which is highly unusual. But the viewpoint character was female and felt totally female. So bravo, CJ, for doing a woman’s perception so well.

A lot of this novel went over my head, because it’s about AI and high tech. Plus there are a lot of references to pop culture that perhaps someone a lot younger than me would get. Same thing with Black experience, and the whole DEI culture in corporate America.

The plot is intriguing. A young Jamaican American woman, a stellar graduate of Harvard, switches from a job in a nonprofit to a high-pressure spot in something that feels like a Musk or Bezos company. She’s thrust into the heady world of AI, with a lot of ethical and philosophical questions.

I ended up skimming some of this book, simply because I didn’t understand parts of it. But I couldn’t put it down. Having the text studded with so many f-bombs was a bit disconcerting. But I’m sure younger people in tech really talk like this.

There will definitely be plenty of buzz about this book.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance review copy.

[Dave Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Octavia Crenshaw is a Jamaican-American software developer who's grieving the loss of her mother while feeling crushed by the debt she inherited thanks to her mom's secret reverse mortgage. She needs money, and she needs it fast. When she lands a job at Eustachain Inc., it seems like a dream come true, with good benefits and a great employee stock ownership program. The problem is, the company isn't just producing audiobooks; it's doing something more nefarious with the massive amounts of data it's collecting on users.

She ends up working on the top secret Project Zion, intended to be an AI storytelling system that's completely free of bias and inequality. Or is there something deeper going on?

You will have to get used to the unusual second-person narration style ("you open the door, realizing that it's not the room you expected."), which makes sense in the narrative, but I found it off-putting. There's a lot to like with this intriguing and very timely book, however, that surprises with its twists. Recommended.

Pre-publication galley provided for review by the publisher.

[Rye Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book truly shifted my perspective on so much. This book is a thriller/mystery/social commentary/kinda love story. The title and book cover really drew me to this book, so I went in blind and I was really glad I did.

I appreciated all the pop culture and historical references and I also thought that the DEI of it all worked, especially in the current climate we’re in. I think a lot of people would benefit from reading his book. I will say it was definitely a slow burn, and the middle was a little hard to get through. But once you get to the ending it’s a page turner for sure.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and William Morrow for this ARC!

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank you to netgalley for the arc!

I cannot express to you how much I enjoyed this book. From the 2nd person narration, to the very timely criticisms of Big Tech all wrapped up in a thriller-esq story that had me laughing, on the edge of my seat, and also gasping at different twists and turns. Genuinely really really appreciate getting the ARC copy of this book because if I'm honest, I can't stop thinking about it. I've already told many friends they need to check it out when it comes out. I already want to go back and reread it!

[Hollowspine · Rating 5 out of 5]

For readers who liked the Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, Uncanny Valley by Ann Wiener, as well as other horror tinted science-fiction. This fictional, yet very realistic, sci-fi horror story combines a very relatable narrator facing ethical, personal and romantic dilemmas with the demands and horrors of a black woman working for Big Tech. The fast-paced, mysterious and twisty plot and witty narrator make for a page-turner that finishes with a twist that lingers in the brain well after the last page is turned.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who Knows You by Heart by C.J. Farley
Published by William Morrow – thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my gifted ARC.

4 out of 5 stars.

Let’s just get this out of the way: this book is told entirely in second person, and yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. But also? It works. Somehow. Miraculously. Against all odds. You, the reader, are Octavia Crenshaw—a Jamaican-American coder living in Manhattan, buried in grief, swimming in debt, and trying to keep your head above water in a world that seems hellbent on erasing you, even as it demands your brilliance. You’re sharp, cynical, burned out, and deeply, frustratingly real. You think you’ve hit a professional jackpot when you land a job at Eustachian Inc., a sleek tech giant obsessed with audio and storytelling. Spoiler: you haven’t.

From day one, Eustachian gives off strong “we-own-your-soul” vibes. You sign NDAs longer than your resume, get lost on secret floors, and encounter just enough bizarre glitches to make you question whether the job came with a complimentary haunted Alexa. You keep your head down. You pretend you don’t see the cracks. Because rent exists, and trauma doesn’t pay the bills.

Enter Walcott, another Black coder with charisma, brains, and a mystery complex. He recruits you for Project Zion—a top-secret AI experiment promising to revolutionize storytelling by eliminating racism and sexism from the algorithm. Zion is supposed to be different. Better. Righteous. You want to believe in it. You need something to believe in. And yes, sparks fly. But this isn’t a romance with a bow on top. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s tangled up in grief, power, ambition, and fear.

C.J. Farley writes with an unflinching eye and a tongue so sharp it could slice through Silicon Valley’s self-congratulatory nonsense. This isn’t just a thriller—it’s a scalpel to the jugular of Big Tech. The satire is biting, the commentary timely, and the cultural references absolutely ruthless. (Taylor Swift gets a rebrand as “Noelle Swizzler” and honestly? I’m here for it.) Farley also folds in some brilliant historical nods—Al-Khwarizmi, Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson’s creepy record-keeping—and they’re not just decorative. They fuel the story’s central question: who gets to shape the narrative? Who gets remembered? Who gets erased?

There’s real poetry here too—beneath the corporate jargon and the tech bro satire, there’s grief, loneliness, and longing. Octavia’s mourning of her parents is raw and believable. Her fight to stay human in a world addicted to artificial intelligence feels achingly familiar. She’s not always likeable, but she’s always compelling. And as for the final twist? Let’s just say I closed the book and whispered, “you’ve got to be kidding me,” out loud. It’s bold. It’s earned. It sticks.

Now, a few caveats. The middle of the book drags like a team meeting that could’ve been an email. Some scenes meander, and one side character interaction toward the end (you’ll know it when you get there) feels like it was pulled from a different novel. Also, while the second-person point of view is effective, it won’t be everyone’s cup of matcha. It demands a kind of emotional buy-in that casual readers might not have the patience for. And yes, if you don’t know tech lingo or have some context for workplace microaggressions, parts of this book might go right over your head—or worse, feel alienating.

But the thing is, that’s the point. This isn’t a universal story—it’s unapologetically specific. It’s about what it means to be you in a world that doesn’t want you to take up space unless you fit a certain mold. It’s about carving your story into systems built to ignore you. And it’s about recognizing that sometimes, the real horror isn’t found in a glitchy AI program—it’s in the boardrooms, in the break rooms, in the places where people pretend to be neutral while maintaining systems of exclusion.

Favorite quote: “The biggest crimes weren’t in the shadows, they were in plain sight.”

This novel will get under your skin—and not because of the tech paranoia (though that’s real), but because it’s asking you to look at what we’ve normalized, what we’ve ignored, and what we’ve allowed ourselves to become.

If you love books that challenge you, books that play with form, books that make you angry in the best way—Who Knows You by Heart is calling. And it sounds an awful lot like you.

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[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Part social thriller, part modern love story, Who Knows You by Heart is a sly, witty, and endlessly discussable tale of Big Tech, new money, relationships, race, and discovering what’s real in an age of artificial intelligence.

Octavia Crenshaw, a Jamaican-American coder living in Manhattan, is broke, burned out, and haunted by her parents’ deaths. Desperate to pay off some debts, she ditches her nonprofit job for a high-paying gig at Eustachian Inc., a Big Tech company that specializes in audio entertainment. Language, communication, human connection—these are the markets Eustachian wants to revolutionize...and dominate.

Octavia finds herself swept up in the world of the Tech Titans, with its lure of instant riches and its seemingly limitless future. But as one of Eustachian’s very few Black employees, Octavia is uncomfortably aware of things that seem to escape her unexplained tech glitches, cryptic remarks, a mysterious secret floor in the corporation’s gleaming headquarters.

But she sets her suspicions aside when she’s recruited by another Black coder—the infuriating but attractive Walcott—to collaborate on a secret project code-named Zion. Zion is a new kind of AI-powered storytelling, one that’s programmed to be free from the racist and sexist biases that plague other AI products. Zion could launch Eustachian into a bold new future and make its developers super rich while righting all kinds of injustices. Octavia and Walcott’s excitement over their creation sets off romantic sparks between the two of them, until they discover a toxic secret about their employer—something that they can’t unlearn, or overlook, but must overcome.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Told in second person, so no possibility for anything above four of five stars exists. A Columbia educated (as we're reminded often) Black woman succumbs to the lure of tech money in this romance-tinged technothriller. It's very much a game of two halves, as the beginning sets up the circumstances of Octavia's decision to accept cold capitalist reality and take a high-paying, not likely to be fulfilling job in order to buy her way out of debt...much of which was inherited from her mother, thus involving Octavia in debt peonage.Fortunately for her a megacompany, Eustachian, Inc.'s, testing algorithm taps her as A Talent.

As witty, obsevant Octavia spends time in Eustachian, Inc., we get the deeply uneasy sense of "offness" that a thriller needs to make it exciting. The author chooses to make this a very extended part of the book, not igniting the thriller part until Walcott, the love interest/cospirator with excellent aims, appears far too near the halfway point. This is also when the language shifts registers as technobabble (for all of me, anyway) predominates from here on out. I perked up, though, because the stated aim of these two Black folks in a lily-white tech company staffed by tech bros is to subvert the systemic racism and misogyny from within using coding skills.

As this is exactly what I think keeps Aynholes awake at night and causes them to refuse DEI anything with all their might, I was so down with this! Especially since I was being tenderized by the (for white people) immersion into Black culture, use of Black contributions to the world, and centering of a Black woman in a plot about confronting and subverting racism and misogyny.

You'll have noticed the incomplete fourth star. I was a bit surprised by Author Farley's complete absence of Asian characters in a novel centering race-based prejudice. Historical reckoning with racism and combating is perpetuation is very much incomplete without more inclusion. Still, It's not fatal as flaws go, nowhere near as guaranteed to put me off as Satanic second-person narration.

I would've relegated this novel to a short review until I got to the final chapter. A summation of the extreme dangers inherent in AI's development *at*all* left me slightly winded from the emotional ooof as the gut-punch landed.

For that alone I hope you'll read the book. (I won't forgive the second-personning waterboard torture, though.)

[Kate (kate_reads_) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books where the less you know going in, the better—but only if you’re going in with the right expectations. Thank you William Morrow for the gifted book to review.

Despite the premise (a woman takes a secretive job at a powerful AI company), this isn’t a thriller in the traditional sense. The suspense is psychological and thematic, not plot-driven. It’s more interested in identity, power, authorship, and the way our personal and cultural histories get remembered, rewritten, and sometimes erased. If you’re here for corporate espionage or chase scenes, this probably isn’t your book.

Told entirely in second person—a choice that will be polarizing—it drops you inside the protagonist’s life in a way that feels both immediate and disorienting. At times, the voice builds intimacy and momentum; at others, it pushes you out. Whether that tension is frustrating or fascinating will depend on the reader.

The book also threads pop culture deeply into its narrative, most notably through a thinly-veiled version of Taylor Swift (named Noelle Swizzler), who becomes a recurring touchpoint for questions about race, appropriation, influence, and reinvention. At first, some of the Swift references read as biting satire, but as the book progresses, it becomes clearer that her story is being used to explore much bigger themes—what it means to own your story, who gets to be the “main character,” and how even our icons are shaped by the systems around them.

The writing is sharp, layered, and often poetic. At times, the book reads like a manifesto; other times, like autofiction filtered through a speculative lens. It’s unafraid to take big swings, even if a few don’t quite land. And it’s especially interested in the intersections of technology and Blackness, agency and surveillance, inheritance and authorship. For me, as a white reader, that felt like part of the point: it’s a book that assumes an audience ready to engage seriously with race, power, and tech—not to be eased in gently.

This book is for you if:
• You love hybrid genre work with a strong voice and philosophical undercurrents
• You’re willing to follow a story that unfolds obliquely, and sometimes circuitously
• You’re interested in AI, memory, and cultural criticism wrapped in a literary package
• You’re ready for fiction that critiques whiteness and tech culture directly
• You want something strange, smart, and deliberately unsettling

Not for you if:
• You’re expecting a thriller, or plot-first narrative
• Second-person POV is a dealbreaker
• You prefer books to land every point cleanly

Who Knows You by Heart doesn’t try to answer all the questions it raises—but it leaves you in a smarter place for having asked them. It’s messy in the way good fiction can be: intellectually charged, emotionally surprising, and hard to categorize.

[Suzi (Lil Bit Reads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

When we meet Octavia Crenshaw, a Jamaican American coder, she’s in debt up to her eyeballs and trying desperately to hold on to her mother’s apartment, so she trades in her non-profit gig for a lucrative job at a big tech firm, Eustachian, Inc. On the surface, Eustachian specializes in audio entertainment, but scratch the façade and surprise, surprise: there’s some shady shit going on.

I was absolutely floored by this whip-smart novel that defies categorization: it’s part sci fi (although frighteningly, so much of it feels less like fiction and more like it’s already happening), part thriller, part romance, and all of it is utterly thought-provoking. Listen, I’m a reader who reads over 200 books a year… when I say I’m still thinking about a book, that’s saying something. And I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time.

The story itself is sharp, scary, and utterly compelling. I’m not a techie, but I do have a healthy skepticism of AI, and this was right up my alley. Soooo much to think about – the intersection of gender and race in tech, data privacy, the power of AI and its rapid adoption and advancement, its built-in biases, and what it all means for humanity – and all of it served up with an edge of humor and a fascinating look at Black creators in history. The second-person perspective is an unusual and unexpectedly compelling choice that somehow doesn’t detract one bit from the reader getting close to Octavia.

Speaking of Octavia, she’s a phenomenal character. She’s brilliant and complex, infused with a wry cynicism and a dose of self-preservation. She deals with some deep issues – mourning her parents, tiptoeing into a budding romance with nerdy Black coder Walcott, and trying to retain her idealism, ethics and humanity while also trying to earn a living and survive. Her voice is so authentically female that I was convinced she must be written by a woman. Nope! Picture me looking like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” when I realized C.J. Farley is, in fact, a guy. Let’s be real – male authors often miss the mark on writing female characters, but Farley GETS IT, he GETS women. I am IMPRESSED, and I will read anything this man writes!

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me an advance copy of this book.

(Also, although this review contains em dashes, parallel structures, and other supposed “AI tells,” it’s 100% written by me, a sometimes wordy GenX-er who loves vocabulary and grammar and all that stuff)

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an odd mix of social commentary on issues like race, class, gender, capitalism and new issues in tech (especially AI) set up with the story of our young Jamaican-turned-New Yorker female coder who is broke, between jobs and newly orphaned. I liked some of what the book had to say but it felt either like there were simply too many issues the author wanted to tackle in the context of one story or that they couldn't super elegantly figure out how to bring them all together. Our young coder, Octavia, ends up landing a job at a super huge tech company at least partially as an attempt to save her late mother's apartment that is at risk of being sold out from underneath her due to potentially predatory lending practices. Octavia starts at her new job and is soon put on a kind of secret project which is not uncommon in the company but keeps everyone wondering what is actually going on. Using Octavia's experience on this project as the backdrop, the author discusses all sorts of issues like those I listed above. I found some good quotes in the midst of the story but they felt a little like finding golden nuggets amidst an awful lot of soil. I found myself lost and confused many times throughout the reading experience maybe because I don't know much about tech but maybe also because it wasn't put together in a way that felt super accessible. I would imagine if you are someone who is interested in and has some knowledge about the emergence of new tech than maybe you might enjoy this story.

Here are a few of the quotes I highlighted:

"IN your mind, branding antiracists as racists is like a tumor charging an oncologist with malpractice. You don't think playing semantical shell games with language is the way to deal with the New Jim Crow."

"There's a freedom in focus, and maybe that's why listening to a good audio book is both grounding and transporting. That's somehow comforting--in a world of distractions, it's supremely satisfying to have an art form that demands and rewards your focus, and yet can somehow also be enjoyed while driving on the interstate of exercising on an elliptical."

"The difference between criminal and revolutionary was sometimes just a story."

"It's a black box full of white lies people don't look into because nobody expects robots to be racist."

**I received a free copy of this ebook from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

[Bhuku · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. Highly recommend for fans of THE CIRCLE (Dave Eggers), Annie Bot (Sierra Greer), and THE COMPOUND (Aisling Rawles).

Premise - Octavia Crenshaw, a Jamaican-American coder living in Manhattan, loses her job after developing a program that spilled all her coworkers' secrets... eep. Broke, grieving her parents' death, and burned out, she lands a dream gig at Eustachian Inc, a Big Tech company specializing in audio entertainment.

From the start, she knows she'll have her work cut out for her at Eustachian Inc. She's one of the only Black employees at the company and the only one who seems to notice things her coworkers are blissfully aware of: tech glitches, cryptic remarks, a mysterious secret floor...

When another Black coder, Walcott, recruits her to work on a secret project, code name Zion, she sets aside her suspicions to go all in on developing this new kind of AI-powered storytelling, one that should help launch a future free from racism and sexism. A dream, right? But Eustachian is hiding something and when Octavia uncovers what it is, it's impossible to ignore...

This is written in second person. That would ordinarily put me off, but this story needed to be affronting so it really worked and didn't feel gimmicky at all. Farley writes so well, and the voice is so engaging and relatable, that I came away from this actively glad that was in second person - it was the right perspective for this story, told this way.

It’s definitely a slow burn story and meanders a bit in the middle, but I enjoyed every bit of the time spent with (as?) Octavia. This tale is SO well told and it’ll stick with me for a while. BRB, telling everyone I know to read this!

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Bahni Turpin. Another new talent (for me, at least) to watch! She did an amazing job with the different characters and voices, and really nailed the main narrative voice. It was a soothing, cozy listen even as the subject matter was beyond creepy (making this story more digestible and me less apt to run away and hide).

Thanks, NetGalley and William Morrow, for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.