Frannie Langton is known as "The Mulatta Murderess." In London 1826, Frannie Langton goes on trial for the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Benham. She was their house-girl, maid, slave, seductress, servant, whatever claim fits best. The testimonies are damning. But the mind of the accused is what drew me in; Frannie cannot confess what she doesn't believe she's done.

Then begins a story of a young girl learning how to read on Paradise Plantation, Jamaica. The year is 1812. Thirteen years later, she is moved to a grand house in London. Her duty is caring for Madame Benham and guarding secrets from the Mister. For years she waits to be freed. Until one day she wakes up in Madame's bed, covered in blood, with no recollection of what happened.

How best can I describe the reading experience of The Confessions of Frannie Langton? Hmmm, long. Not long as in the time it took to finish (5 days). Not long as in page length (352). Long as in the unfolding of the story.

There was a lot of background information leading up to the present time at Frannie's trial. Perhaps I was misled by the first line, thinking this would be a fast-moving read full of testimonies and maybe a couple flashbacks. Instead the author took us back in time. And I do understand the author's purpose. Readers had to learn if, or why, Frannie Langton was on trial for murder. No one act happens without reason. I get it. But damn, it was long.

The main character, Frannie Langton, is well fleshed out. So much so, that I felt her anxiety and hopes rise. Just like she waited for freedom, I waited for something to happen soon too. Because maybe then, the story would move along. Get on with the events leading up to the night in question!

Yet this new novel fits comfortably in the historical fiction genre. It is the reason, along with the promise of courtroom drama, that I wanted to read an advance copy. I like how it revealed slaves were taken from Jamaica and the conditions of England in the 1800s. I also like the acceptance of her being able to read and scribe. Her masters did not feel threatened by Frannie's intelligence. In fact, Madame encouraged Frannie to read and often had discussions about book plots. So rare during this era!

Overall The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a good read, appropriate title, interesting characters, but not-so-good pacing. If you pick up this book, get comfortable and know it will take a while for this slow-moving train to reach the station.

Happy Early Pub Day, Sara Collins! The Confessions of Frannie Langton will be available on Tuesday, May 21.

LiteraryMarie

Thank you to the publisher and author for gifting me a digital ARC of this title via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I am a big fan of historical fiction and found the premise of this book so interesting and intriguing. I was quite excited to receive the ARC so I had a chance to read it. My confession, I did not like this book despite really wanting to. The author is a good writer and the story was an easy one to get in to. I just didn't like the story, the characters, their choices and actions. Everything about it rubbed me wrong and made it a long, tedious read to get through. I could see why Frannie made the choices she did as she grew up. It was more products of her environment and circumstances. She was a house girl/slave raised to go along with the whims and demands of her masters in order to survive. I get that and don't hold it against her. However, I found her character to be so annoying and grating that I lost any connection or interest in her and and her story. The story is written so that you know all along that a murder has taken place and that she is in jail for it, but the book is a LONG drawn-out tale of getting to what actually happened, who was killed and why. Maybe the writing style and storyline will appeal to a lot and I'll be the minority in my negative confession. I do think the author shows talent as a writer. It just wasn't for me.

The Confessions of Frankie Langdon is a engrossing historical fiction novel that just pulled me write into the story. Well written and great characters. This is a must read.

A slave's story with a twist - she is accused of killing both her master and mistress. Frannie remains silent about what happened that night, especially in court, but she writes down her story in her jail cell. From her beginnings in Jamaica as a science experiment to what she thought would be her freedom in London, we learn her story. It is also interesting that the court proceedings and testimony are there which further widens the divide between free and slave. We witness the unspeakable horrors that befell the slaves from the torturous experiments to the more subtle reminders of power. One interesting sidenote is the comparison of slave and the wives of the monster owners. Frannie's voice and outwardly stoic manner blend seamlessly with her deep-rooted distrust and emotional wounds. The perfect companion to the male voice in WASHINGTON BLACK. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins is an historical novel-part mystery where one starts near the end and looks back to find how Frannie ended up where she became accused of the alleged charges.
It is gripping and is a fast read to get to the surprise at the end.
I cannot reveal much, as a spoiler would be cruel and unfair.

4/5.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this novel in return for my honest review.

It seems that any work of historical fiction with Sapphic undertones inevitably draws a comparison to Sarah Waters. And frankly for a good reason, since Waters pretty much set the bar for it and set it pretty high indeed. I’m a huge fan of her work, but she does like to take her time between the books and meanwhile I’m always interested in (albeit somewhat skeptically) in similar books or at least books claiming to be similar. I must say that usually they don’t hold a candle to Waters’ stories, but this one came dangerously close. In fact it came the closest to being on the same level of luminosity as far as candles go. And from this reader that is a very high praise. But comparisons aside, Collins’ work stands with confidence on its own two very literary feet planted on both sides of the Atlantic for the purposes of the story and what a story this was. 1826. Frannie Langton, a former slave from West Indies and later a servant to a wealthy London family stands accused of a double murder. Justice system being what it is, and especially what it was, there isn’t much expectations of the actual justice being carried out and truth isn’t always a factor, so Frannie sets out to tell her own story and it is through these prison memoirs that the readers find out about a brief brutal life that shaped her and a brief passionate love that doomed her. Frannie Langton’s confessions are riveting, mesmerizing, disturbing, the life she’s led, lives really have been informed, confined and restricted by her circumstances and as such the book is a condemnation of both upstairs/downstairs dynamics and racial/slavery politics that were prevalent at the time. Born and raised on a plantation, educated for the sake of an experiment, she is a subject to her morally reprehensible master for most of her life, assisting him with carrying out his studies of race via such antiquated (to a modern reader) disciplines as phrenology. Eventually she is taken to London and abandoned by him, left in service of a family of a fellow scientist who is also obsessed with finding out the secrets to racial differences, she is much too smart, too strong willed, too outspoken to make an ideal servant and things only get more complicated when she falls in love, an absolutely impossible (logistically and otherwise) love. So Downton Abbey is certainly isn’t. And it’s impossible to expect it all to end happily and yet Frannie is such an engaging character that it’s impossible not to want for her all the things the society would deny her. In a way this is a prototypical outcast story about someone who is too bright, too complicated, too singular to fit into societal constraints and is thus condemned. Mulatto murderess, whore, seductress, manipulator, witch…all the names and all the shame and the impossible weight of the color of her skin and her social status and her gender, but there is so much more to the story. This book…it reads like a dream. It reads like books ought to, nearly impossible to put down. Frannie is a strikingly compelling narrator and her life is an utterly engaging narrative. I read tons. always hoping to come across books this good. This was a pleasure to read through and through. And Frannie Langston is an unforgettable shining star protagonist. For a debut it’s astonishing in quality and power and beauty, for a work of fiction it’s a triumph. I absolutely loved it. Not only a terrific work of fiction, it’s smart, timely and makes you ponder all manner of interesting complex thoughts. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

Wow what a book. Never read anything like it. As if written by a mulatto woman in England accused of murdering her husband and wife owners/employers in 1825–this book is a fascinating look at slavery in Jamaica(where Frannie was taken from) and conditions in England at that time. Incredibly well written, suspenseful, literate and most of all and excellent psychological study of Frannie her loves, and life. A stand out as historical fiction, character study, and exciting court room drama , I dont want to give to much away but read it. I will look out for anything else Collins writes.

April, 1826. The gallery at the Old Bailey was filled to overflowing with "quality folk" and "ordinary folk" there to witness the trial of Frances Langton, indicted for the willful murder of George and Marguerite Benham. Frannie's owner George, was found stabbed to death in the library while wife Marguerite, was discovered in her bedchamber. Frannie was soundly asleep next to Madame's body. Frannie's hands and shirt sleeves were covered in blood.

Frannie had refused or was unable to discuss what happened that night. Defense lawyer, John Pettigrew, suggested that she explain herself using paper and quill. "My intentions in writing my jailhouse musings, ...it's my life, I want to assemble the pieces of it myself". "For every crime there are two stories, and that an Old Bailey trial is the story of the crime, not the story of the prisoner. That story is the one only I can tell".

Frances Langton was born in Paradise, Jamaica. She worked in the lower field "throwing dung into cane holes" until age seven when she became a house-girl for Miss-bella Langton. Sitting by the water one day, Frannie accidently knocked Miss-bella's book into the water. The punishment, the book must be dry before she would be allowed to come indoors. At first, she thought the letters in the book were "trapped, each shackled to the next one", but reading would become her salvation. There were those who believed that slaves, as property, should not be exposed to new ideas.

Master Langton manipulated Frannie's love of reading for his own means. Langton and Benham were rivals studying anatomy but both proposed to "...compile a survey of the natural mental endowments of each race of men..." As a reader and writer, Frannie "scribed" for Langton and was eventually forced to start participating in the performance of other duties.

One day, Langton took Frannie to Levenhall, the London residence of George Benham. She was given as a "gift" to Benham. Under-maid Prudence "...feared I'd howl, bare my teeth...it's all savagery where you come from..." Housekeeper, Mrs. Linux resenting Frannie's presence told her to be quiet, no shirking and no thieving. In Levenhall, Frannie experienced intense love and raging hate. A good servant must know her place, but book learning created a modicum of freedom for her.

"The Confessions of Frannie Langton" by Sara Collins displayed the haunting, devastating life of Frances Langton, as written by Frannie herself, in Newgate Prison awaiting trial in Old Bailey. Through Frannie's account, we learn of the ghastly experiments performed to determine the intellect of slaves, assuming their inability to learn. We learn of the co-dependency of Frannie and Marguerite Benham. Court testimony conjures up a "snapshot" of how the prosecution views the suspect. Is Frannie aka the "Mulatta Murderess", so named by the press, guilty of a double murder? Read it and find out! I highly recommend this debut historical mystery by Sara Collins.

Thank you HarperCollins Publishers and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "The Confessions of Frannie Langton".

What sounded like an interesting historical mystery about a former slave from a Jamaican sugar plantation who is on trial for killing her English employers just fell flat for me.
In the early chapters where Frannie describes her childhood on the plantation, the reader gets a glimpse into what life was like for people like Frannie. It is obvious the author has done a great deal of research and it really helps pull the reader in. As Frannie grows up and becomes more involved in the work of her master, just enough hints are dropped about various things at the plantation to create mystery for the reader. The problem is that as Frannie’s time at the plantation comes to an end, very very few of those questions have satisfactory answers, or even enough information for readers to make good inferences. What exactly are the specifics of the relationship between Frannie and Langston? What exactly happened in the Coach House (to be honest I’m still not sure having finished the book!). Why does Frannie feel so guilty? I know many books, especially mysteries, like to leave readers guessing, and even leave some questions unanswered. But in this story everything was just TOO vague when addressing issues that obviously had major impact on Frannie and her life. Instead of leaving me intrigued it made me frustrated.
When Frannie travels to England the story really began to drag for me. I realize Frannie was retelling it in an almost stream-of-consciousness kind of manner, but not moving in a chronological way became confusing. I know that Frannie was left feeling unmoored, but I had a very hard time following what was happening. Frannie also seemed to become a different person. I considered not finishing the book, but I did want to find out the answers to the questions from her time in Jamaica, as well as discover the truth behind the murders. So I kept reading, but did skim quite a bit.
In the final chapters of the book, I found myself not really caring anymore. Frannie had made so many dumb decisions that she had become totally unsympathetic. When the circumstances surrounding the murders were described and the reader finally learned the answers to (most) of the lingering questions in the book, it seemed rushed and anticlimactic. If some of that information, especially things having to do with Jamaica, had been revealed earlier in the book, I think it would have given more weight to the story. I also feel as though the relationship at the heart of the story was not well-developed. If this was what influenced Frannie’s biggest decisions, it shouldn’t have felt tacked on.
All in all, this story was well-researched and had good bones. But the way it was fleshed out left a lot to be desired. It needed to be tighter and more stream-lined. I also feel like some things were added in just to make the story more titillating. This book could have been much better. It just wasn’t for me.

This novel piqued my interest from the first page, but, unfortunately I found it very slow moving in places. Eventually toward the end of the book the story picks up the pace, and my questions were answered. Frannie Langton's story is at times difficult to read. The often horrific life she is forced to endure is heartbreaking. But she is a strong woman who perseveres. I was hoping for a different ending, but unfortunately it ended realistically. Historical fiction fans may enjoy this book.
Thank you to the Publisher and Netgalley for allowing me to review this novel.