Story by Kristi Gustafson Barlette, Times Union

Former New York City advertising strategist Molly Dunn has traded pitch decks for plot twists. After stints at major ad agencies, as well as NBC News and Meta, Dunn spent five years writing her debut novel, "The Circuitry We Share", while living in Saratoga Springs.

The psychological thriller - about four intuitive women whose lives collide when they realize they've all fallen for the same Silicon Valley filmmaker - is now in bookstores.

Dunn still considers herself a New Yorker who happens to live upstate, writes slowly, skis even slower and is always quick with a joke.

— SARATOGA DISPATCH, Abby Tegnelia Jan 07, 2026

Molly Dunn, an esteemed advertising exec and — as of yesterday, an author — is currently the star of NYC subway ads that are running all over Manhattan and Brooklyn for the month of January.

The reason: Dunn’s exciting debut novel, the psychological thriller The Circuitry We Share.

“I wanted to catch the attention of folks on the streets of NYC,” says the Queens native who also lived in Manhattan and Brooklyn before migrating north. “The best part of [New York City] is the people — they have a taste level like no other — so if New Yorkers purchase and read The Circuitry We Share and something within it resonates with them, well then, slam f***ing dunk.”

—Saratoga Living After Hours

Dec 18, 2025

“Saratoga-based author Molly Dunn’s debut novel, The Circuitry We Share, occupies the thoughtful space where science, intimacy, and human connection overlap. A disappearance on the cliffs of Big Sur pulls an investigative journalist into a story that feels uncomfortably close to home. As Zoe Harrison follows the trail, she uncovers three other women—each deeply empathic, each drawn to the same charismatic filmmaker—whose lives intersect through a relationship that was never accidental. What begins as romantic betrayal opens into something far colder: a tech experiment built to exploit emotional connection itself. The Circuitry We Share is less about love gone wrong than about vulnerability engineered, asking what happens when the very trait that makes us human becomes something that can be studied, copied, and used against us.”

—Abby Tegnelia, SARATOGA DISPATCH
December 22, 2025

[The Circuitry We Share] is a psychological thriller that follows four hyper-empathic women who discover they’ve all fallen for the same enigmatic Silicon Valley filmmaker. As they begin to unravel his duplicity, they uncover a web of deception that stretches far beyond romantic betrayal — and into the darkest corners of the tech world.

Fun fact: “While The Circuitry We Share is intended to be read sequentially from front to back,” Dunn says, “the novel also has a ‘choose your own adventure’ option, as it is told from different points of view of the four main characters. Readers can pick a character of their liking and read where the story takes them with just those chapters. Then read other characters’ chapters and see how their storylines intersect.

“This is great for book clubs, those looking to bend their minds while reading on their own, or folks just short on time — creating even more intrigue.”