Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes is the first mystery from award-winning author Sandra Jackson-Opoku. With an anticipated release date of July 29, 2025, it takes readers to Chicago’s South Side. Savvy is a restaurateur just trying to make a living and stay connected to her community. When a customer collapses in her establishment, she finds herself in the center of a murder investigation. Why did someone kill this grandfather? Why in her restaurant? And especially, why does it look like it was her sweet potato pie that was used as the murder weapon?
I want to thank St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes. All opinions presented here are my own.
Synopsis from Goodreads
When Savvy Summers first opened Essie’s Soul Food Café, she never expected her customer-favorite sweet potato pie to become the center of a murder investigation. But when Grandy Jaspers, the 75-year-old neighborhood womanizer, drops dead at table two, she suddenly has more to worry about than just maintaining Essie’s reputation for the finest soul food in the Chicagoland area.
Even as the police deem Grandy’s death an accident, Savvy quickly finds herself—and her beloved café—in the middle of an entire city’s worth of bad press. Desperate to clear her name and keep her business afloat, Savvy and her snooping assistant manager, Penny Lopés, take it upon themselves to find who really killed Grandy.
But with a slimy investor harassing her to sell her name and business, customers avoiding her sweet potato pie like the plague, and her police sergeant ex-husband suddenly back in the picture, will Savvy be able to clear the café’s name and solve Grandy’s murder before it all falls apart?
After all, while Savvy always said her sweet potato pie was to die for, she never meant literally.
Positives
- Under 350 pages.
- Plenty of suspects to choose from.
Negatives
- Excessive amounts of slang can be found throughout the book.
My Thoughts
I will admit, I was drawn to Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by both the cover and the title. Both are enough to pull you into the book. And at under 350 pages, it’s easy to stick around and read.
One thing I like is when mysteries offer multiple suspects to choose from. And Savvy finds herself with a list close to ten when she starts her investigation. As the book progresses, she does narrow that list down, but also finds herself adding to it as she goes along. I had my suspicions about the culprit, and while I may have been correct, I was also wrong, especially regarding the motives.
My biggest issue with the book was the excessive use of slang. While I appreciate what many would call local flair, I found some of it a stumbling block as I didn’t understand what they were trying to say. There were a few instances when they tried to explain it to a character, and it only further confused me. As someone who grew up in the South, I had no problems understanding Great-Aunt Essie’s sayings, as several of those are commonly said.
Overall, Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes was an okay read. Though I will admit, I’m not sure if I will continue with the series, if it’s to become one.
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I know what you mean about the slang being the biggest negative. I’ve run into that issue with other books before, where slang or accents written out phonetically just interfere too much with my enjoyment of the story.
I know I’ve read books with a lot of slang, or local language, and not had issues. But those may have been different because I listened to them. This one if felt like every conversation was full of slang, and it was a bit of a struggle.