Hmmm, this is a tough one to review. I wanted to love it. I was excited to hear that it was a tribute to Jane Eyre, a gothic romance with a Jamaican slave as the main character, it sounds right up my street. Unfortunately, it didn't grab me; I wasn't enthralled by the story, didn't warm to the characters and found it was too long. Saying that, there was a lot to appreciate about the writing, clearly lots of research and expertise went into it and the style of writing was good. 
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

Here we go again with this year’s virtue-signalling themes. Slavery, sexual abuse, gender identity, aren’t men awful, no wonder women are driven to lesbianism and dressing up as men. It wouldn’t be so bad if this kind of loose victim-claiming wasn’t quite so incoherent. Is lesbianism really a result of men being horrible, nasty rapists and abusers? I’m guessing if one suggested that outright, one would be shouted down, and rightly so, so surely authors who’re desperately trying to make points, should think through the points they’re inadvertently making. I am so tired of literary misandry, and of feminists who think misogyny is bad but misandry’s just fine.

This is the second book I’ve begun this year which rests on the idea of a slave being educated by his or her master to assist in scientific experiments. I find it highly unlikely that Frannie could gain the equivalent of what seems like a graduate-level education in literature, philosophy and anthropology from reading a few books and talking to her drunken, abusive owner, but let it go.

Then we get to Victorian London, where of course by recent literary convention all women defy their restricted circumstances by having lesbian relationships, and/or dressing up in men’s clothes. But let that go too. That this particular lesbian relationship is between a white gentlewoman and her mulatto maid... OK, it’s stretching now, but let it go. That the attraction is because of their shared love for Milton and for feminist literature – oh, come on! Give me a break!

Abandoned at 30% for not being about an ex-slave accused of murdering her employers as promised in the blurb, and instead being a mish-mash of all today’s liberal concerns re-hashed yet again so we can all wallow deliciously in our virtuous guilt. How I long for a story set in Victorian London that actually feels like Victorian London. I guess the only thing to do is to go back to reading books by actual Victorian Londoners...

A prime example of “write the kind of book you want to read yourself”, Sara Collins has pulled out all the stops to create this stunning debut. Frances Langton is a character who burrows under your skin and stays with you forever. Everything about this novel was beautiful and original. Simply wonderful!

3.5 of 5 stars
https://lynns-books.com/2019/03/22/the-confessions-of-frannie-langton-by-sara-collins/
The Confessions of Frannie Langton was an impressive debut and an intriguing read.  Ultimately it’s the rather sad story of one young woman’s life.  Born into slavery, Frannie Langton spent her first few years on a Jamaican sugar plantation, ironically called Paradise, before being taken by her master to London and given away as a house servant.

I enjoyed this read, it was certainly told in a compelling way and in spite of a few issues I think it was an impressive debut.

Frannie is in prison.  She’s accused of the murder of her former employers and due to stand trial.  With very little hope of being found innocent she decides to write down her own story.  She takes us back to her earliest memories on the plantation and slowly but surely gives us her account of the events that led up to the murders.  What makes this account so intriguing is that Frannie is well spoken and can read and write.  She was an experiment of sorts, her master at the plantation wishing to see how far he could take her education.  Her sharp mind and ability to learn land her in difficulties, she becomes invaluable to her master as a scribe, taking down notes of his experiments which unfortunately are of a very grim nature.  One thing leads to another and Frannie is taken to London and left as a servant in the Benham household.

I would say that this story has two aspects to it.  There’s the mystery of the murder and events leading up to it and there’s the mystery of Frannie’s past and the links between her former master and her new employer Benham and the hideous experiments they undertook together.  Personally, I felt like this story would have worked better if it had focused more on Frannie and the murder mystery.  For me, the experimentation side of the story felt like it was added in to create a sensation or maybe to come up with new territory but I didn’t really feel like it added anything to the murder/mystery aspect of the story and in a way the mystery behind the experiments and the build up to the revelation felt like it stole some of the thunder from the events that led up to the murders.

What I really enjoyed about this was the writing and the ease in which the author depicts life, either at the plantation or in the Georgian home that Frannie is taken to.  Frannie has a lovely narrative voice and is very easy to read.  She’s maybe not always her own best friend, she certainly doesn’t make friends easily but I can’t really fault her for sticking up for herself even if others think her headstrong.

This is at heart a sad tale.  Things were never really going to work out well for Frannie.  She becomes addicted not only to laudanum but also to the love of her new mistress.  Marguerite is trapped in an unhappy marriage.  In a way she’s almost like a slave (although a very pampered, indolent and privileged one).  She practically lives in one room of the house, brought out as little more than decoration when it suits her husband.  To be honest I didn’t really like Marguerite.  Of course I felt sorry for her in a loveless marriage, she was trapped to an extent but I also felt like she also played with the lives of others with little regard for their welfare.

Frannie meanwhile has become something of an Eliza Doolittle.  With her well spoken manner and ability to read and write she’s definitely out of place.  She doesn’t fit in with the downstairs staff and she doesn’t fit in with the upstairs quality.  She quite literally becomes besotted with Marguerite which eventually leads to petty jealousies and a rift that sees her banished from the household.

I won’t elaborate on the story.  There’s a mystery to be uncovered here that is best discovered whilst reading.

Overall, I thought this was a good read.  I think the pacing was a little slow in the first half but it wasn’t something that really bothered me too much as I was enjoying Frannie’s account.  Personally, I think there’s a little too much going on in terms of the two different storylines but I enjoyed this even if, as I mentioned above, it’s a sad tale.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

Sara Collins states that she set out to write a gothic romance with a black slave as the main character. She has done much more than this however with the tale of Frannie Langton. The reader learns a great deal about the horrors of human experimentation to investigate racial differences and also about the aftermath of the abolition of the slave trade.   
The story is told from the point of view of Frannie as she awaits and experiences her trial for double murder.   Frannie was born on a sugar plantation then brought to London by her ex-owner and passed on to another couple to be their housemaid.   In this household she discovers love but succumbs to drug abuse and her life spirals downwards resulting in her arrest and trial.
This was a well-researched book but not an easy read.   I do think the book would have benefitted from further editing as it was rather long, with some aspects drawn out and others only given limited time and explanation.   Overall I would recommend this book to fans of historical fiction and will look out for more by the author.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really didn't like this. While the writing is somewhat impressive, the unlikable characters and the ridiculousness and implausibility of some parts of the story arc,  just made it a chore for me to read. This was just another book about the horrors of Slavery, which is ironic given how many time in the book slaves and former slaves refers to not wanting to write about or been known for talking about the savagery of Slavery as that's all the white abolitionists  are interested from former slaves or something along those lines.

While black female characters are under-represented in main stream literature, other than the fact that Frannie is the narrator, her character is described or portrayed as many of the negative connotations black women are fighting against still on a daily basis - frightening, a whore, uppity, manipulative, stupid.- without dispelling or correcting these myths. So a different representation would have been preferable.

I can't say that I have read any Gothic Literature before, so maybe the book is supposed to be this way and I'm not a fan of the genre. I will say that as a work of historical fiction it seemed well researched. 

I'm sure it will go down a treat for others, as it seems tick a lot of the diversity boxes.

This is an unusual story about a mulatto slave girl, who is bought to London, but passed onto a couple to be their servant. Frannie is unusual because she can read and write. She works around the house, until the mistress decided she can be her secretary. The mistress is also taking laundanum, and has some pecualir turns with it. Frannie falls in love with her, but also wonders why the master is studying her. Eventually she finds herself taking laudanum, and becomes hooked on it. SHe is thrown out of the house, and ends up in a salon for fallen women who sell themselves for money.
She eventually goes back to the house, and finds herself in between the master and the mistress. She ends up stabbing at least one of them, and is betrayed by the housekeeper, and ends up in jail, where the warders torment her. The details of her trial are both shocking and tortuous, and she is eventually sentenced to hang.
This story felt a little too long, and sometimes had unecessary detail in it. The characters are well drawn, but the conclusion is inevitable.

I found this book interesting and quite believable.  Fannie really came alive for me particularly during her trial . The reason for the 4 stars only is because I found the book just a bit too long;   too much description at times which didn't add anything.
The story starts with Fannie growing up in a Jamaican sugar plantation ,the  master of which is a strange scientist.  Through  his connections Fannie arrives in London where she works for another scientist and his wife......the trial is the result of Fannie being accused of killing both of them.

Frannie Langton is on trial - the 'Mulatta Murderess', prosecuted for the murder of her master and mistress, Benham and his wife Marguerite.

Frannie is convinced she did not kill Marguerite, her lover, yet the effects of laudanum means the truth is hard to uncover.

I really enjoyed this book - packed full of mystery, twists and thrills as the reader follows the story of Frannie from her rather macabre education on a Jamaican estate, her journey to London, and the fascinating characters surrounding her. Well recommended.

The synopsis of this book and the cover ( i admit to) attracted me to this book and was happy to be granted an advanced readers copy, so thank you for that, to Netgalley and the Publishers. 

We are taken straight away into the story, which i really liked and into court where Frannie is charged with Murder, not on one but two counts, Her Mistress and Master.
The bodies were found in different parts of the house, but the thing is that, her mistress was in the same room as Frannie as they slept AND Frannie was found with blood on her and her clothes.

I just love a Historical Novel, especially one that sets up the story / plot like Collins does, she has grace in her penmanship and i was captivated by her prose. 

Frannie has comes from the Plantations in Jamaica and it seems that her only crime, really ( this is not a spoiler) was to be born mixed raced, especially in the century in which this book is set, the 1800's and when you find out who her parents are.

We read alot of injustice to not only Frannie, but of her race and gender, we get to know Frannie throughout the book as she writes from her prison cell.

I have seen this described as a gothic thriller, to me Gothic means the atmosphere of Frankenstein, this was not that for me, it was a Thriller for for, but it gave me an altogether feeling.

I really enjoyed this book and I am eargly awaiting the release date in April 2019 , so i can get my hands on a beautiful copy and add it to my collection. I am also going to get it on audiobook, just to see how the narrator deals with the content.

I feel I have said alot of words, but failed in  portraying the feel you get from this book, and for that readers, i apologise.
Read this for yourself and let me know what you think!

Very enjoyable historical drama. I was so sad at the end, but it was all inevitable, I guess. Recommended

It took me ages to get through this book because I had to keep taking breaks and reading something else. The pace is very, very slow moving and it tackles some heavy issues but it's not the most interesting of storylines. So I struggled to read it, I had to keep taking breaks to read something else and then come back and read a bit more.

The story only picked up at the end when it turns to the actual trial but then that is just rushed through in a couple of chapters. Though since the trial itself only lasts a day and a half - a sham trial, the minds of the judge and jurors made up before they enter the room - it's actually a realistic representation. If there had been more of the events of that night or the things Frannie did when helping Langton with his experiments revealed at points through the book it might have added a bit more interest and life to the story. Most of it focuses on her obsession with Marguerite - something that never felt believable to me. 

What I like most about this book is that Frannie is angry. She's not a kind-hearted, self-sacrificing good girl. She's angry at the way she's treated and she doesn't win people over with the kindness of her heart and you can believe it is quite possible she might actually have murdered her master and mistress. 

I also liked that it goes in-depth into the overt sexism and racism prevalent at the time and the viewpoint from the slave is done realistically. I can feel Frannie's frustration at her situation coming off her in waves. An intelligent woman who would be happy with just a bit of free time to read a book every now and again, she is treated as a savage and a beast by everyone around her. 

This book has a lot to say and it's worth reading for its viewpoint on race and slavery alone. I just found it too slow to hold my interest for long periods of reading and it's also a bit dreary and very depressing.

I hesitated before I picked up this book, because I thought that it might be just another example of a kind if book that I have read many times before. I did pick it up, and I was glad that I did as soon as I read the author’s introduction.

<i>‘On the small Carribean island where I grew up, I re-read ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’, trying to imagine windswept moors, drawing rooms draped in silk and sighing women, and men dashing about on horses – corrupting or taming or rescuing.

My own word stretched to coconut trees and white sand. Nothing from it ever made an appearance in those pages. At some point their came a realisation that those books I loved didn’t quite love me back. And that left questions in their wake.

Why couldn’t a Jamaican former slave be the star of her own gothic romance? Why couldn’t she be complicated, ambiguous, complex? Why had no one like that ever had a love story like those?’</i>

Frannie Langton, the star of this gothic romance, is a wonderful answer to those questions.

She was born a slave early in the 19th century, beginning her life as the only mulatto on a Sugar plantation worked by slaves belonging to the Langton family from England. The Master and Mistress brought her into the house, she was educated, but that left her isolated because she would never fit into their world and she couldn’t fit back into the world of her fellow slaves.

When circumstances forced the Master to return to England he took Frannie with him. She hope for freedom, for a new life; but he gave her to friends, to becomes a servant in their grand house. She catches the eye of her new Mistress, she keeps Frannie close to her, and a bond grows between them ….

The story moves forward to tell the story of Frannie’s life in London and it looks backwards to tell the story of her childhood in Jamica.

Frannie has much time to think about her past, because one morning she awoke to find the Mistress she had come to loved lying dead and covered in blood. She was arrested, she was imprisoned, and she was put on trial. She knew that she hadn’t – that she couldn’t have – done what she was accused of, but she knew that the circumstances made her look guilty and that her background and her situation would be held against her, and she wanted to understand how her life had reached that point, because she had a great many questions about her own past that she could not answer.

Sara Collins writes so well. The cast of characters is wonderful, and each and every one of them has different aspects – nobody is there simply to play a part, they are all fully realised human beings who have pasts – and hopefully futures. That cast is deployed well in an engaging plot, and interesting questions are explored along the way.

The atmosphere is wonderful, allowing the characters and the story to live and breathe, and bringing the period and two very different characters to life.

The prose is gorgeous and Frannie’s voice rang true.

<i>‘English rain weighs nothing. It’s the air that is heavy, and always has the seep of water in it. The streets were wet, and seemed to be tumbling under some giant peggy-stick. I stood there among the dizzying clatter of hammers and scaffolds and barrows moving piles of bricks that were either crumbling our of buildings or being plastered into them, so it seemed to be a city building itself and eating itself at the same time. Waiting carriages lined up along the high wall, horses shying under the dark bulk of warehouses. A crossing-sweeper was knocked down and the line of foot passengers just curved around him, like a river around a rock.’</i>

I loved the way that the author honoured her influences while telling her own story. That passage made me add Dickens to the list of names that were mentioned in the introduction. I was disappointed thought that there were elements in this story that were over-familiar from other recent books that were set in the same period, and that the set-up of the murder mystery was rather too elaborate and improbable.

That meant there were too many times when this book felt generic, and the writing and the ideas underpinning the story were so much better than that.

This is a promising debut but I think – I hope – that the author will go on to write better books.

An intriguing look at slavery through a sensational crime, this is a well written, interesting story, especially the part set on plantation. Excellent scene setting and atmosphere.

This is an intriguing and thought provoking read. Historical fiction with a dose of modern sensibility which makes us reconsider many preconceptions about race and slavery and human relationships. It takes the form of a life story of an accused murderess with from the outset the reader aware that Frannie is recounting her story at the behest of her lawyer in anticipation of her trial. We know she is accused of murder but as she tells her story she challenges expectations openly and challenges her reader to reconsider these relations. She is not what her reader is expecting.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I was gripped by Frannie and saw the world wholly through her eyes, was invested in her life and cared deeply about what happened to her. There is a mystery unfolding which I'd not want to spoil and the unfolding of that mystery does not disappoint. this is an engrossing and engaging debut. Please do give it a try.

Frannie Langton narrates her life story - from her childhood as a house slave in Jamaica,  through to arrest for the murder of her master and her beloved mistress in London. Frannie can't remember what happened on the night of the murder, and she is also hiding from herself the activities she was engaged in with her master Langton on the ironically named Paradise Plantation in Jamaica.  The story was a gripping one, and I had to keep reading to find out whether my imaginings about what Frannie had done were correct.  
As a compelling read, it is hard to fault this book, but I felt that the author raised issues that weren't quite resolved: for example, the debate about how white men wanted to see slaves only as victims or beasts - what was the reader's position in sharing Frannie's story?  I also couldn't quite decide if the story was historically accurate:  lots didn't ring quite true (although I'm willing to be told that it was); but it wasn't obviously an alternative take on history in the way that 'the Underground Railroad' is.

The premise of this book was great, but the actual execution wasn't the best for me. 
The beginning and the last 20% were really good, but the middle dragged a lot. There were lots of scenes which didn't add much to the plot, and sometimes the alternation between past and present was too sudden and confusing. It might also be that I really didn't like the romance. I couldn't see why Frannie was so devoted to the person she loved. Their scenes together just annoyed me.
That being said, the writing was good (even if too descriptive for my tastes) and Frannie's characterization was interesting. She was a complex character and, while I mostly felt sympathetic towards her, she also had a darker side and many mysterious traits. Her narration of certain scenes was very ambiguous, so that it was difficult to understand how reliable she truly was. This was definitely an interesting aspect, even though it also kept me from really loving and feeling for her. 
Another thing I liked was how the mystery aspect was handled. The court scenes were gripping, and my idea about the murders changed several times during the story. The solution wasn't entirely clear until the end and I liked it. However, this was a small aspect of the story compared to others, and it was a little disappointing for me.
Not a bad book but not exactly to my tastes. However, I think you should give it a try if you are interested in it.

This book is about the life of Frannie Langton. We meet her as she awaits the outcome of her trial in London for the murder of her "Madame" and then the action goes back in time to Frannie's time as a young girl, a mulatto slave girl on a Jamaican plantation who is brought at the age of seven to work in the big house along with Phibba the cook to see to the mistress's every whim. The mistress is unhappily married to Mr Langton and can be a cruel mistress although she does teach Frannie to read and write. The master is certainly cruel and one day gets Frannie to admit where Phibba keeps her "healing" herbs which leads to Phibba's demise. Frannie blames herself for this and  is also haunted by the help she gave Mr Langton with his experiments into genetics in his coach house. So, although she maintains she is not guilty of the crimes she is standing trial for she feels she is guilty of murder. Langton is eventually ousted from his plantation and takes Frannie to London and gives her to George Benham a former colleague and a published and noted expert on genetics who he hopes will reappraise his opinion on Landton's research and recommend him for publishing. It is here that Frannie meets "madame", Mr Benham's wife and starts on her path to the gallows

I quite enjoyed this book. It had a lot of potential and things to like but I felt the author wanted to cram in everything she had researched, everything she knew about the 1820's and it felt a bit like "everything but the kitchen sink" had been thrown at it. Halfway through I wasn't rushing back to keep reading and I also felt it was a bit of a pastiche of other novels I'd read. The early part of the book set  on a Jamaican plantation  was very reminiscent of Andrea Levy's The Long Song and then the later part set in England was reminiscent of lots of Victorian gothic novels with  opium addiction and some Sarah Waters (Fingersmith) thrown in too. There was also Frankenstein type horror revealed over the course of the novel about the experiments that the master carried out in the coach house on his Jamaican plantation. It was all abit too much and I feel if one or more story lines had been dropped in favour of really exploring one or two then it would have been a finer novel.

Hmmm...I have to say I didn’t like this book at all. It started promising but just was too slow for me and I just got a bit bored. I didn’t empathise or like any of the characters either. Sorry..

My thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

This is a finely detailed, richly coloured, riveting read. The story is quite shocking as Frannie was a house slave, a mulatto, very bright and despite everything has incredible strength of character, shocking because of what she sees and experiences. Moving from Jamaica to London, grannies life becomes even more complicated. Gothic, compelling, twisting and unsettling, this is a great read.