REVIEW: Summers Power – Danger City #1 – BL Jones

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Danger City has been ruled by the bloody iron fists of the Winters crime family for decades.

When the Summers family waged war on the Winters in an attempt to take their power, violence reigned, taking no mercy on both sides of the conflict. The Summers were eventually defeated and as a result Max Summers lost everything.

Flash forward sixteen years, Max is a new man, no longer a gangster, but a simple primary school teacher still grieving the loss of his first love and trying his best to raise his children as a single father.

Cue his old rival Sam Winters re-entering his life when their oldest sons meet at school and become best friends.

During their time apart, Sam continued on the path laid out for him, climbing the organisation’s ranks right to the top. He has become every inch the mighty and lethal crime boss he was born to be.

After their unplanned reunification, both men are forced to confront the nightmares of their joint past and the burgeoning desire developing between them.

Can Max allow himself to fall in love with anyone again, let alone the man who was once his greatest enemy?

It has been years since Max Summers’s father began a war against the Winter family, the mafia family that runs Danger City. It was a war that cost Max everything because when the war ended the Summers family were the big losers. His father in prison for life, his mother dead and Max sent away with nothing.

Homeless, no money and alone it would take a car accident to save him. Penny and her daughter Natalie Starr did not see Max and hit him, not seriously but enough for him to end up in the hospital. When Penny discovers that he has nowhere to go when he is released, she takes him in, and he agrees to work at her cafe.

Max and Natalie fell in love and married. They had two children, a boy and a girl, and he went to school and became a teacher. His life was happy except for the nightmares he can’t get rid of about his life as part of his family before and after the war. His past was violent, not something he can forget. Then his life changed when Natalie was killed by a car. A car accident saved him, and a car accident cost him the love of his life.

Raising his two children by himself with help from Penny, he is shocked when his son Rory reveals that his best friend is Elijah Winters. It can’t possibly be the same Winters, but it was, and his arch enemy Sam Winters will be back in his life. Growing up together he was groomed to be Sam’s second just as his father was his grandfather’s second till the war.

Their fights were legendary, no holds barred, fists, knives and anything else that they could get their hands on. Max hated Sam and still does.

Sam also lost his wife and is now raising his three children alone while waiting for his grandfather to announce that he is retiring, and Sam is the new boss. Max and Sam’s children all like each other so they must keep their hatred to a minimum for their kid’s sakes. When Sam asks Max to join him and his children at the aquarium Max says no, no, no but unfortunately that was in his mind his mouth said yes.

Neither man both now in their thirties can put the past behind them but with every insult that Max aims at Sam he has feelings that are more than hate. Max knows he still is capable of violence even though that part of his life is behind him.

I loved the main characters, Max, Sam and the children were a highlight in an otherwise violent past. I found the book to be slow moving at times and felt it was just a little too long when it kept referring to the past. There are unsolved issues, so I look forward to the next book in the series to learn more about Max, Sam, Penny and the children.