Which flight do you think is better?

So I’m booking my flight to Raleigh next year to see my partners and obviously looking into the flights there’s only two flights with 1 connection and I don’t know which one is..preferably better? In a way

The first one is from Manchester > London > Raleigh but the flight to London and Raleigh is estimated to 8hr and 30mins

And the second one is Manchester > NY then a wait of 4 hours and 15 minutes (it’s also around night time too, it’ll be 21:30 when I board the plane) > Raleigh

Btw this is like my first time flying alone so I suppose I want some advice :D