{"id":6548,"date":"2025-07-24T03:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6548"},"modified":"2025-07-24T03:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:11:09","slug":"sandra-jackson-opoku-savvy-summers-and-the-sweet-potato-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/sandra-jackson-opoku-savvy-summers-and-the-sweet-potato-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sandra Jackson-Opoku: Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debut<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes<\/em> is the winner of Minotaur’s Malice Domestic\u00a9 Award, a prize previously won by writers like Donna Andrews and Julia Spencer-Fleming. Savvy Summers owns the soul food restaurant Sapphire Summers Soulfood Caf\u00e9 and Catering Company, or Essie\u2019s, for the abbreviation SSS-CCC. Her restaurant is a staple of the community and one of the few remaining businesses on a sought-after bit of land. Her one employee and friend, Penny Porter Lopes, keeps things running smoothly. Savvy is a very down-to-earth woman who is determined to make a success of her business and to keep ahold of it, something that is becoming increasingly difficult with numerous phone calls and emails from a very annoying investor harassing her almost daily.<\/p>\n

Despite the harassment, Savvy is doing good business. This includes a catering gig for the Jaspers\u2019 fifteenth anniversary that has a rough start and ends up even worse. Between catering mishaps, not Savvy\u2019s, clients ordering too little food, and demanding smaller servings for guests, it\u2019s a wonder that they are able to pull off the event at all. Glad to be done with the drama, Savvy and Penny open up their caf\u00e9 the next morning and are shocked to see the disgraced womanizing Mr. Jaspers first thing, and they are even more shocked when he suddenly drops dead at his table after a slice of Savvy’s sweet potato pie. Not the best thing for any business, but even worse for a food service one.<\/p>\n

Savvy’s caf\u00e9 turns into a ghost town, as everyone begins to suspect that it was her food that did the deed. With rumors catching like wildfire, Savvy and Penny decide they need to work together to clear the caf\u00e9\u2019s name and also get justice and closure for the Jaspers. Having no investigative experience herself, it\u2019s a lucky thing that Savvy\u2019s first ex-husband and police sergeant Fanon Franklin is willing to help her out. At least a little bit, anyway – he would much prefer both women avoid any investigative work that could bring them into the path of a killer. All the while, the sleazy investor ups his harassment, delighting in their misfortune. Given Mr. Jasper\u2019s wandering ways, it isn\u2019t hard to think of people who might want him dead, so it is lucky that the team can limit their pool to those who were at the anniversary party. But the closer they get, the more muddled things become as another body appears. Once more, Savvy\u2019s sweet potato pie is caught in the light of suspicion.<\/p>\n

Sandra Jackson-Opoku submerges readers in Chicago culture. Savvy and Penny are both dynamic and interesting characters, and readers will enjoy following on their adventures. Penny\u2019s social sleuthing skills, and Savvy\u2019s critical thinking and kindness, gets nearly everyone to open up to them. When words and kindness don\u2019t do the trick, there are always baked goods, just not sweet potato pie. Finding justice for the Jaspers also gets justice for Essie\u2019s and the beloved pie. I also enjoyed that Sandra Jackson-Opoku actually shows us Savvy\u2019s \u2018murder charts\u2019 in the book, not something I have seen in any other cozy I\u2019ve read thus far. Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes <\/em>is an engaging read and it will be interesting to see what adventures await Savvy and Penny in the future.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 – Carla Schantz<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debut Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes is the winner of Minotaur’s Malice Domestic\u00a9 Award, a prize previously won by writers like Donna Andrews and Julia Spencer-Fleming. Savvy Summers owns the soul food restaurant Sapphire Summers Soulfood Caf\u00e9 and Catering Company, or Essie\u2019s, for the abbreviation SSS-CCC. Her restaurant is a staple of the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1057,949,328,1218,2201,100,2199,2200,2202],"class_list":["post-6548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-amateur-sleuth","tag-carla-schantz","tag-cozy","tag-debut","tag-malice-domestic-award","tag-minotaur-books","tag-sandra-jackson-opoku","tag-savvy-summers-and-the-sweet-potato-crimes","tag-sweet-potato-pie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6557,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6548\/revisions\/6557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}