Publication Date: November 11, 2025
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 coworkers: 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.
Who Knows You by Heart is multilayered, relevant, and will make you look over your shoulder, or rather make you suspicious of all things tech.
C. J. Farley is not new to the writing scene and has spent 5 years working in the tech industry. Only someone with a deep understanding of storytelling and a peek behind the scenes of the world of technology could have imagined this story.
Octavia Crenshaw has decided she needs to leave some idealistic dreams behind and accepts a job at one of the biggest tech companies, Eustachian. She has the experience and the knowledge to take on projects that Eustachian claims will revolutionize the audio entertainment industry. She wants the big money offered there. Her character is very relevant as a Jamaican American woman who daily faces microaggressions of both race and gender.
Octavia is willing to put in as much work as is needed and swallow her pride to be part of a secretive project: AI-powered storytelling that promises to be programmed to be free from racist and sexist biases. She is partnered with another black coder. Although at first Octavia finds Walcott to be too much of a nerd for her taste, long nights and company secrets ignite sexual tension.
The way the story is narrated feels futuristic, and it is only during the last chapter that the reader will truly understand the method. The plot is believable, especially as we all wade through conspiracy theories that swirl around us today. As AI slips into our lives, we are fascinated, a little freaked out, but mostly we have come to know the limits of what we can control and what will happen even when a Pandora’s box of possible terror arrives hand in hand with new technology.
Who Knows You by Heart plunges its main character into a world of complicated lies and company secrets within the world of AI. Will she be able to hold onto values she thought she held dear, or will she be drawn into this technology that seems to grow bigger than we can control?
C. J. Farley, born in Kingston, Jamaica, and raised in Brockport, New York, graduated from Harvard University and served as an editor of the Harvard Lampoon. Farley’s novel Around Harvard Square won an NAACP Image Award and the author’s biography Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Farley co-wrote and co-edited the book The Blues with Martin Scorsese and was consulting producer on the Peabody-winning HBO documentary Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown. Farley, a former senior editor for the Wall Street Journal and a former music critic for Time magazine, has interviewed some of the greatest musical artists in the world, including Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Lauryn Hill, Adele, Beyoncé, Jay Z, Radiohead and Taylor Swift. Farley also worked as an Executive Editor at Amazon Inc.’s Audible.
