Victory Vault

By: Jake Maddox, Pulsar Studio (Beehive)

Narrated by: anonymous

Kayla is the best gymnast on her team. When she misses her vault at an important gymnastics meet, no one sees her mistake - except her best friend, Chandra. When Chandra pressures her to tell the truth, Kayla must decide if keeping her trophy is worth losing her friend.

©2014 Jake Maddox, Pulsar Studio (Beehive) (P)2013 Capstone Publishers, Inc.

The importance of telling the truth

In this book, which is part of a series of books all dealing with sports, Kayla is a gymnast. She's a good gymnast. In fact, Kayla is so good that she has begun slacking off in her practice.

The consequence of that slacking off appears in a competition when she doesn't stick her landing on her vault. But nobody seems to have noticed. Her coach, her teammates, even the judges! They were too busy being distracted by another gymnast who had taken a hard fall from the uneven bars at the same time that Kayla had messed up. As a result, her score was not affected by her misstep and her team won, giving Kayla the trophy to take home. But one person did notice - Chandra, her best friend.

Chandra thinks Kayla should give the trophy back, because she didn't really earn it. Kayla disagrees, saying that it wasn't her fault the judges didn't see her mistake - she didn't lie, after all - and says she won fair and square. The disagreement causes a fight that threatens to end their friendship. Will Kayla come clean to the judges and save her friendship? Or will she choose the trophy over her friend?

This was a good story, but it was incredibly predictable. While that may not be true of readers who are in the age range for whom the book is written, it came off as condescending to me. While I appreciated the underlying morals of telling the truth and trying your best, I found myself rolling my eyes at the story by the end. Speaking of the end, it was cute AND incredibly predictable. Again, the predictability of the ending is likely largely due to my life experiences. You may find it to be less so. I would like to point out that I didn't really mind the predictability; the condescension I could have done without.

For this novella, I listened to the audiobook. Narrated by an anonymous person, the performance was good, and it would certainly be a good option for a child who is perhaps struggling as a reader to use while they also follow along in the book. Despite my less than stellar reaction, I will most likely try another book from the series to which this book belongs. I am withholding my final rating until I have done that; this book may not be a good representation of the series or the author's work, and I certainly wouldn't want to miss out on good novellas by Maddox simply because the first one I read didn't impress me.