96 Miles by J.L. Esplin is a very fascinating fiction book about 4 kids who find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere in the desert, walking trying to reach a place where they can stay.

The story begins with a huge power outage in southern Nevada. The main protagonist, John, lives with his older brother, Stewart, in a town on the outskirts of Nevada. Their dad, John Lockwood, is a survivalist who the group embarks on their journey through the Nevada desert.  keeps a stash of water, food, and anything else they would need in an emergency in his house . 

One day their dad leaves to go on a business trip out of state, and the two boys are left to stay on their own at the house. All goes well, for the first few days, until they are at a family friend’s house, and the power goes out. Suddenly, all of their resources disappear, and they are forced to walk 96 miles to a ranch where they can stay with family until the outage is over.

 As they start walking, they meet Clevery and Will, two other kids that are in the same situation, so they join together and share what goods they have. With limited water, food, and in the presence of the scorching hot desert sun,

I liked how the story was described at this point in the book, cleary stating the main issue that would affect the rest of the story, as well as introducing the readers to key characters. I like how he managed to do this in a relatively short amount of time in terms of pages taking up to the story, keeping the reader engaged. The story is paced relatively well here, having a nice flow between certain points in the story, without jumping ahead too much. When I read this portion, I was very interested, and wanted to read much more on what was going to happen in the book, The way that there are key events in the story, such as instances where they needed to obtain water or built a shelter or find a place to sleep were portrayed in the book was something I really enjoyed, as it really expressed the importances of these scenarios, both by the actions of the characters and how the story is described to us from the main protagonist, John.

I found this book very interesting, as it included many interesting circumstances. The characters have to learn to adapt to their situation. As I read, I was very invested in the story, as there were many engaging plot points, such as when the four main characters had to make crucial decisions which kept me on the edge of my seat, such as when the main characters had to walk 9 miles at night with limited light from a flashlight to get water.

I really enjoyed the suspense and some points in the book, and I couldn’t put the book down most of the time, as I was very engrossed in the story.  96 Miles is a book I would definitely recommend to those looking for a good read full of action, suspense, and some drama.