Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to review this book!

Lex fled Memphis after her mother died, intent on having adventures and leaving the staid existence in her home town. A shocking loss and a call from her godmother bring her home years later, plunging her into a world where she has to relearn what it means to be family.

What I found interesting in this book is that it focuses on linguistics, something I haven't even considered since a course in college. It's an angle I'd never seen before, and I enjoyed that. I also thought it was well written and flowed well. It's also a well crated mystery.

Lex, however, was not a likeable character. I feel like she spent most of the novel clinging to old hurts because she didn't want to actually change or understand what her mother may have gone through. Honestly, as much as I empathized with her, I found her to be whiny and recalcitrant. At times, it was hard to read because she was so irritating. Overall, I am glad I stuck it out to the end, because it was a doozy.

I really enjoyed Cook's previous novel HOW TO BURY YOUR BROTHER. It was all about family relationships and this theme is also followed in LEARNING TO SPEAK SOUTHERN, although in a very different tone. In SPEAK SOUTHERN, Cook show us a complex and difficult mother-daughter relationship and slowly exposes the basis for discord. In the past few years, there have been a number of excellent novels about daughters who learn about their mother's past lives and Cook adds one more to the pile with SPEAK SOUTHERN All of the characters were well-developed and the plot flowed naturally with a satisfying conclusion.