Review: Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


3.5 stars rounded up for the clever ending.

I had a difficult time translating some of the language in this book. I think the author called it Black Speak, a combination of deep Southern cant and Chicagoan street slang ...so I'm White and a New Englander, and therefore you can understand some of my ignorance!

Besides the language, I had trouble with a few things in this novel that I don't think anyone else will find problematic. Too many characters, not enough solid explanations for the reason why some things were happening, large skips in the timeline with no explanation, etc.

However, once I just let myself fall into the story, I found myself enjoying it, and it shocked the heck out of me to find out who did it and why! This was not quite a cozy mystery, but it was heart-warming, and I loved the recipes at the back of the book, as well as the explanations of some of Aunt Essie's Epithets.

ARC provided by the publisher Macmillan Publishers/Minotaur Books, the author, and NetGalley.



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DESCRIPTION: "A sparkling debut mystery set on the south side of Chicago, featuring the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, proprietor of a soul food café.

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.