Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoka

Item: Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes
Rating: 5
Author: BaronessMom

Posted October 4, 2025 by BaronessMom in #BookishRecipe, Mystery, Review, Series / 0 Comments

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from the Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes

by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Series: Savvy Summers Mysteries #1
Series Rating:

Published by Minotaur Books on July 29, 2025
Setting: Chicago, Illinois
Genres: Cozy Culinary Mystery
Pages: 336
Format: Audible Audiobook, Hardcover, Kindle
Source: the Publisher
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Get Your Copy at: Amazon

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.

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoka is a marvelous mystery.

Will Savvy find the culprit before she is bankrupt?

Savvy Summers

Our sleuth is Savvy Summers, who is a former counselor turned restaurant owner and chef. She is well known for her sweet potato pie. Savvy likes to solve puzzles.

I like Savvy. One of my favorite things about her is her calmness. She has a way of putting people at ease. Savvy has a generous heart and is always willing to help those in need. Her sweet potato pie is prize-winning, and she is always trying to upgrade her menu to include new things.

Savvy doesn’t have much family left, just her children and grandchild. When she was young, she lost her parents and was raised by her great aunt. However, her aunt passed. Savvy still talks to her aunt now. It is as if her aunt has become Savvy’s conscience, helping her navigate the negative aspects of the world around her.

“You might be right. As Great-Aunt Essie used to say, he’s the kind that wants his pie and pudding both.”

“Doesn’t the saying go, he wants to have his cake and eat it, too?”

“That never made sense to my aunt,” I admitted. “What else are you going to do with the cake, smear it on your face?”

“I guess old girl had a point. Now, hoarding your pie and pudding both, that’s just plain greedy.”

The Mystery

We start with a fiftieth wedding anniversary, where the couple has a fight and runs off without paying the bill. Then later, the man ends up dead at the restaurant after eating Savvy’s sweet potato pie. After that, things start going crazy with a wrongful death suit, a property developer trying to get her property, and business is extremely slow.

Then, at the annual pie contest, the councilman who was being hit in the face with Savvy’s sweet potato pies dies—another blow to the restaurant’s reputation. This gives Savvy more reason to suspect that the two deaths are connected. She and her friend, Penny, start investigating with the assistance of Savvy’s ex-husband, a Chicago Police Officer.

I love that she can be friends with her ex and they still socialize and hang out together.

Five Stars

My rating for Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoka is five stars. I love the characters, and the setting of Chicago is lovely. The little details that the author includes about the city and its people are nice. The mystery was fantastic, well-plotted, and didn’t give away too much. I was able to figure it out slightly before the culprits confronted Savvy. I highly recommend this cozy mystery.

The book also includes some fantastic recipes, including: Orange Blossom Lemonade, Peppermint Honey Hot Chocolate, Aunt Essie’s Sweet Potato Pie, Savvy’s “In Your Face” Prize-Winning Vegan Sweet Potato Pie, Black-Eyed Pea Fritters, and Lemon Pepper Air-Fried Perch. There is also a section called Great-Aunt Essie’s Epithets. I really like that part.

Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoka.

Until the next time,

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About Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of the award-winning novel, The River Where Blood is Born and Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him, an Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction. She also coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks.

Her fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works are widely published and produced in Adi Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, New Daughters of Africa, Obsidian, Another Chicago Magazine, storySouth, Lifeline Theatre, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and others.

Professional recognition includes a Plentitudes Journal Prize, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship, an American Library Association Black Caucus Award, a City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, a Globe Soup Story Award, the Joan Perry Barnes Fellow in Crime Writing at Storyknife Writers Retreat and a Pushcart Prize nomination.

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