Category: Sara Collins

About The Book

‘They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don’t believe I’ve done?’

1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning – slave, whore, seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth.

For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed.

But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved?

A beautiful and haunting tale about one woman’s fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through laudanum-laced dressing rooms and dark-as-night back alleys, into the enthralling heart of Georgian London.

My Review

With thanks to the publisher for the copy received via LoveReading. The Confessions of Frannie Langton was a book that made me feel equally outraged and devastated. The first part of it takes place in Jamaica, on the plantation where Frannie was born. I was horrified to read about the way the slaves were treated but a lot of what happens isn’t revealed until much later in the novel. The mistake Frannie makes that results in the death of another is chilling. After a fire the story switches to life in London.

Frannie isn’t an easy person to like. She is hot headed, sometimes rude and makes life a lot harder for herself. But she is also loyal to Madame, Sal and Pru. Pru was one of my favourite characters in the novel. She was one of the few who could see beyond the colour of Frannie’s skin. The attitude of many in the novel, the racial hatred and superstition made me cringe. But this was nothing compared to the way she and many others were treated by Langton and Benham. 

Whilst I liked all of this novel my favourite parts were the ones in Jamaica and the trial. I have read novels before that have court scenes but never one from the 19th century. It was during the trial scenes that I liked Frannie a lot more.  I started to see her depth of character, the regret she felt over her mistake in Jamaica, the frustration that so many were wealthy due to slavery and the horror that she was forced to participate in before she was brought to England. 

It’s a wonderful novel and Sara Collins is an author I would read again.