The Three Vests by Robert Bowman was published in 2003 by Smart and Smarter Publishing. In the book, there are three friends, who live in Wenatchee Washington. The friends are George, Juan and Samantha,who enjoy going on adventures together. One day they decided to go to Boulder Cave, where they actually go often. This specific time, they noticed a chest sitting in the middle of the cave and when they opened it, they received powers in the form of vests. With their vests, they go through lots of struggles and challenges, like not knowing how to turn their powers off and getting detention in school to keep their powers a secret, to trying to use them for good by stopping the evil, Dark Vests. In the end, there is a surprising twist that leads the Brilliants to a whole new adventure.
This novel has multiple strengths. One strength is the writer's ability to fit the writing to the appropriate audience, which is teens. He used slang that teens would have used back in 2003, which made the book so much more realistic. He didn’t use college vocabulary words when they spoke, because 13 and 14 year olds wouldn't have known about those words, which was a great strength in the book. Another of the strengths in the book was the place the book was set. The author managed to do a great job picking the perfect place where the three kids could go and explore. Wenatchee is more on the countryside, and it also has lots of caves and hikes and barns so that fit in perfectly with the plot.
Of course, this book did have a few weaknesses. For one, the characters, in my opinion, were too young to fit in with the story. It doesn't seem believable and realistic. Three 14 year old kids could never have beaten multiple, strong 6-foot tall guys. The characters should've been more towards the 17 year range. Another weakness was the abrupt ending. It took a long time for the three Brilliants to get to the dark vests, and when they finally managed to find them, they fought them for only about a minute. It would have had a more successful ending if they took longer to fight.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. It was interesting, and also quite adventurous. The storyline was predictable, but not in a bad way. You were still eager to find out what actually did happen and the way that it happened. I would recommend this book to the best friend ever, Irina Prozapas. She likes to read fictional books, so this book made me think of her. She also has an adventurous side of her which also made me think that she’ll enjoy this book as much as I have.